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CCHI awards its inaugural “Discover Healthcare Interpreting CoreCHI” Scholarship to five recipients.

July 15th is a special day for the Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters (CCHI). July 15th is our birthday! We are proud of all that we have accomplished working together with stakeholders in the healthcare interpreting profession and industry. We have provided a national, accredited, comprehensive certification to over 3,000 healthcare interpreters across the nation.

This year our birthday celebration is extra special. In 2017, we established the “Discover Healthcare Interpreting” CoreCHI™ Scholarship. This scholarship supports certification of interpreters of languages for which only the CoreCHI™ certification is currently available, including refugee languages and languages of lesser diffusion. It is an important milestone in the life of CCHI as a non-profit organization. We did not do it alone. Today, as we are announcing the first recipients, we would like to take this opportunity to thank Fluency Inc. and Bill Glasser, personally, for the contribution to our inaugural scholarship.

Fluency Inc. is a leading Software as a Service provider that provides spoken and American Sign Language agencies efficient, industry-leading tools to schedule, track, invoice and document face-to-face interpreting encounters. By supporting the professionalization of interpreters through our contribution, we strengthen the capacity and continued excellence of our partner language agencies nationwide, thereby improving language access for our nation’s millions of LEP people in a virtuous cycle of accountability and quality assurance.

The first recipients of the “Discover Healthcare Interpreting” CoreCHI™ Scholarship, sponsored byFluency, are:

  1. Briscoe, Pornwipa L. (Thai; CA)
  2. Foster, Marcia N (Portuguese; GA)
  3. Maldonado Hernandez, Domingo (K’iche; OH)
  4. Ntunzwenimana, Marc (French, Kirundi, Kinyarwanda; ME)
  5. Tagarian, Mehdi (Farsi; WA)

CCHI and Fluency Inc. commend the achievements and the commitment to professional success of the scholarship winners. We wish them the best of luck on their testing and certification journey.

Nominations for two volunteer board positions

The Certification Commission for Healthcare Interpreters is opening nominations for the following Board positions for the term from August 15, 2017 to August 14, 2020:

  • Commissioner
  • Commissioner, Public Member

Nominees must represent a stakeholder group of the healthcare interpreting profession, healthcare interpreting industry, or field of language access to health care.

Before nominating, please read the following documents (click on the title):

You may nominate yourself or someone else. If you nominate someone, prior to submission of the nomination, that individual must agree to the nomination and to serve for a term of three (3) years.

Nominations must be submitted on the Nomination Form (click here to download) as an attachment via email with the subject “CCHI Commissioner nomination” by 8:00 p.m. EDT on July 21, 2017 to: nominations@cchicertification.org.

Thank you for your interest and support!

CCHI receives NCCA Accreditation for its CHI™ Certification

On June 29, 2012, CCHI received NCCA accreditation of its Certified Healthcare Interpreter (CHI™) (Spanish) program by submitting an application demonstrating the program’s compliance with the NCCA’s Standards for the Accreditation of Certification Programs. NCCA is the accrediting body of the Institute for Credentialing Excellence (formerly the National Organization for Competency Assurance). Since 1977, the NCCA has been accrediting certifying programs based on the highest quality standards in professional certification to ensure the programs adhere to modern standards of practice in the certification industry. To view the standards visit www.credentialingexcellence.org.

“CCHI is the first and only organization certifying healthcare interpreters to receive NCCA accreditation,” said Natalya Mytareva, CCHI Chair.

Good news travels fast. By the following Monday morning, the American Hospital Association News for July 2, 2012 featured CCHI in the headline story: Certification Program for Health Care Interpreters Receives Accreditation. Emails, phone calls and messages of congratulations and celebrations began pouring into CCHI this month from legions of healthcare interpreters who helped CCHI create the CHI™ certification programs.

There are more than 260 NCCA accredited programs that certify individuals in a wide range of professions and occupations including nurses, financial professionals, respiratory therapists, counselors, emergency technicians and more.

“Our NCCA accreditation journey began on the day CCHI was launched, July 1, 2009, because we were 100 percent committed to creating the best, most valid, most credible professional certification for healthcare interpreters, which directly benefits patient safety, health care providers, and interpreters who work in more than 139 languages,” said Mara Youdelman, J.D., CCHI’s Founding Chair.

Fred Hobby, CEO, Institute for Diversity in Health Management, and CCHI Commissioner from 2009 to 2011 said, “NCCA accreditation awarded to CCHI is an outstanding achievement, plus strong and clear recognition of CCHI’s leadership and a strong sense of equity in health care for all we are privileged to serve. CCHI appreciates, tremendously, all who volunteered their time and personal resources to make quality communications the hallmark of quality care. CCHI is now the gold standard by which all other interpreter services programs will be measured.”

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