Celebrating 10 Years of Collaboration with Health Bridges to Improve Translation Services for Underserved Patients

Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center (PVHMC) celebrates a 10-year collaboration with Health Bridges, a student-run nonprofit organization that provides healthcare translation resources for low-income, limited English proficient and underserved individuals in the Inland Empire and greater Los Angeles County.

Over the years, Health Bridges volunteers have supported patients in the PVHMC emergency department by providing basic interpretation services for those who speak Spanish, Mandarin, Korean and Vietnamese. Their health advocates have also assisted eligible patients to enroll in the Hospital Presumptive Eligibility (HPE) Program to access temporary medical insurance while admitted to the hospital. Since 2015, Health Bridges has helped more than 950 people with HPEs. Between 2023- 2024, they provided 1,200 translation services.

“We’re proud to work with organization such as Health Bridges who are dedicated to making health care more equitable for our patients who need language service assistance,” said Richard E. Yochum, FACHE, President/CEO, Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center. “As we celebrate a decade of working with them, we look forward to many more years of collaboration to improve services for our patients and bearing witness to the positive community impact that Health Bridges continues to make.”

Ten years ago, Hongdeng Gao, then a student at Pomona College, who is fluent in English, speaks three dialects of Chinese, Spanish, and Japanese, envisioned a world in which immigrants, regardless of their linguistic skills, income level, or legal status, face no barriers to timely health services. Hongdeng found an opportunity to help others through starting the Health Bridges pilot program through a grant from the Napier Initiative, a partnership between Pilgrim Place and the five undergraduate Claremont Colleges to encourage leadership for social change.

“The program originated from the experience of college student Hongdeng Gao, who dreamed of a Napier project that would establish a permanent medical translation program in the Pomona Valley,” said Mary Elizabeth Moore, council chair, Napier Initiative. “With the Napier Award and generous help from staff at Pomona Valley Hospital Medical Center, Hongdeng brought the program to reality, and it continues to this day – 10 years later. Other Napier students have caught Hongdeng’s passion and have continued to strengthen and expand the program."

Hongdeng provided extensive training to bilingual volunteers from the Claremont Colleges to assist patients who don’t speak English in navigating the hospital system to obtain health resources for which they are eligible. Her pilot project started with PVHMC to support its low-income immigrant patient population, who had limited translation services at the time.

The inspiration to start Health Bridges came from Hongdeng’s mother’s lived experiences. As a native Chinese speaker, Hongdeng’s mother encountered tremendous challenges in navigating health services while living undocumented, uninsured and without translation services in New York. Hongdeng’s mother developed liver disease and eventually succumbed to the condition. Hongdeng was anguished at the situation her mother faced in a fractured health care system.

Through the Napier Initiative, Hongdeng has been able to honor her mother by creating a valuable resource that has brought support and dignity to countless patients who have been able to receive vital translational services.

“I had envisioned a program in which multilingual students like me could be trained to interpret and advocate for patients in hospital settings so that healthcare delivery could be made more equitable, especially for low income or non-English speaking patients,” said Hongdeng Gao. “Mentors at the Draper Center and fellow Pomona students really inspired and encouraged me to pursue the idea further. I still remember vividly how incredible it was when PVHMC saw the importance of the program. The funding and mentorship that I received from the Napier Initiative allowed me and a group of incredible students at the Claremont Colleges to fully develop Health Bridges—from a mere vision—to an actual program that is still running strong today.”