2025 End of Year CCHI Chair Message

Let’s not sugar coat it – this has been a challenging year. The communities we serve, and we ourselves, are facing uncertainty in today’s political climate. Economic pressures, offshoring, and rapid advances in AI are raising real concerns about the future of our profession.  I’m proud to be the new chair of CCHI at this pivotal moment. Our staff and Commissioners are working hard to support our certificants, our profession, and the people we interpret for.

This fall, CCHI launched our Season of Gratitude social media campaign, and your responses were inspiring. On a personal level, I am deeply grateful for my fellow Commissioners, for the interpreters I work alongside and learn from, and for the sense of community we share. Most of all, I’m grateful for the opportunity to make a meaningful difference for patients during difficult moments.  And I am so grateful and impressed by the strength and commitment I continue to see across the healthcare interpreting community despite the challenging landscape we all are navigating.

This year also marked an important milestone with the release of our report on the Global Workforce Survey of Healthcare Interpreters. For the first time, we have solid data that tells our story: a diverse, highly educated, and remarkably loyal workforce in a complex profession. This information strengthens our advocacy and helps ground conversations about our work in facts, not assumptions.

Supporting you in the field remains central to CCHI’s mission. This year we added an Advocacy Resources page to our website.  These tools are meant to ensure you feel equipped to advocate for your patients and for our profession. This is also why we introduced the new Ethics continuing education requirement. As AI continues to advance, one thing is clear: ethics cannot be automated. Humans practice ethics. AI does not. Ethical decision-making requires judgment, accountability, and the ability to respond to context, culture, and human emotion in real time. Our code of ethics – and our understanding of our role in healthcare encounters – is a core reason certified interpreters remain essential, especially in high-stakes and sensitive situations. These are times of change, but we remain confident that there will always be a place for certified healthcare interpreters.

Thank you for your professionalism, your compassion, and your commitment. CCHI is proud to support you, and we look forward to continuing this work together in the year ahead.

With gratitude,
Johanna Parker, M.A., FCCI, CHI-Spanish
Chair, Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters

Click here for the video version of this message.