CHIA’s efforts to overcome language and cultural barriers in the delivery of healthcare include working to improve the training, professionalism and opportunities of dedicated and dual-role interpreters, healthcare professionals and healthcare facility staff.  CHIA members:

• Network via chapter activities, committees, and the annual conference.
• Help in the development of interpreter standards, training, and certification.
• Participate in an online registry of interpreters, either as someone wanting to make your services available to employers or as a purchaser of interpreting services.
• Have access to online job listings.
• Educate policymakers and influence policymaking.
• Receive electronic updates on events and developments in the field.
• Receive a quarterly newsletter.
• Enjoy knowing that they are working toward improved healthcare — and better health — for millions of Californians.

What does your membership mean to CHIA? We need your ideas, expertise, and volunteered time to help the organization stay connected, diverse, and reflective of the exciting changes going on in the field of healthcare interpreting.

Testimonial from CHIA Member

How does CHIA membership give an edge to freelance interpreter?
The collective benefits of CHIA membership, ranging from representation and promotion at the local and State level to the development of standards and protocols, benefit us all collectively. But from the viewpoint of the individual interpreter CHIA is a fantastic resource for professional growth. Joining CHIA is a clear commitment to individual professionalism.

For this reason CHIA membership makes you stand out from other freelancers. This is not wishful thinking or thoughtless boosterism. Writing here, not as a CHIA member but as a representative of an interpreting agency, I can assure you that we pay particular attention to CHIA members when we choose the interpreters with whom we work.

For an agency like ours this is just good sense. When we encounter an interpreter that has joined CHIA we get a strong signal that this interpreter is interested in professionalism. The CHIA Standards for Healthcare Interpreters are extremely important to us and we see CHIA membership as an implicit commitment to engage productively with the issues raised in the Standards.

More than this, CHIA membership implies both a commitment to professional improvement and a heightened awareness of the ethical aspects of the interpreting profession. Most CHIA members probably assume these are a given; alas no.

Of course, CHIA membership in itself does not confer a halo. But when we see that an interpreter is a current member of CHIA we certainly take notice. Amazingly we can even prove this to you: if by chance you are a freelance member of CHIA and are not currently working with us, please contact us at the email address for CHIA members below and we would be delighted to see if we can work together.

—Guy Moppel for CHIA member Interpreters Unlimited.
Interpreters Unlimited has worked with interpreters throughout
California for 35 years.