Honoring Origins in Mindfulness for Equity (HOME): Multilingual Videos in Cantonese and Spanish for Mind-Body Health
Names of Project Leads:
Denise V. Ruvalcaba, BA, Clinical Research Coordinator
Selena Chan, DO, Associate Director of Clinical Programs and Director of Public Classes
Unmet Need: The San Francisco Bay Area is home to a diverse population, with 45.4% of residents speaking a language other than English at home, according to the U.S. Census Bureau (2020). Of this group, Chinese (including Cantonese and Mandarin) represents 18.6%, and Spanish accounts for 11.7%. The HOME initiative seeks to create culturally relevant and accessible mind-body health resources by producing multilingual meditation videos in Cantonese and Spanish.
Proposed Project: To foster Integrative Health Equity (Chao, Adler 2024), HOME seeks to expand OCIH’s mindfulness-focused videos that are publicly available via YouTube by adding comparable content in Spanish and Cantonese. Designed by native speakers with deep cultural knowledge, these resources honor the origins of mindfulness practices while addressing the evolving needs of modern communities for mind-body health. HOME will create 12 videos—6 each in Spanish and Cantonese—tailored to the linguistic and cultural needs of diverse communities. These videos will blend ancient mindfulness practices in modern, engaging formats via a three-pronged approach:
Developing culturally-attuned videos: Relying on translations of traditional Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) resources developed in a Western context are inadvertently stripped of cultural nuances.HOME aims to create mindfulness practice videos that are linguistically accurate and inclusive of culturally resonant non-verbal cues for Latine and Chinese mind-body health, in complement to English-only videos OCIH currently offers.
Video format: An ideal medium for conveying the subtlety of practices to improve mind-body health. With project leads and collaborators personally and professionally versed in Latine and Chinese communities, HOME will create video resources ensuring cultural depth is fully conveyed through facial expressions, body language, and tone of voice—elements that cannot be captured in written translations.
Public Accessibility: All content will be freely available to the public for sustainability and broad distribution.
Anticipated Outcomes
Twelve 5-20 minutes, culturally tailored and professional quality videos in Spanish (6) and Cantonese (6) freely available to the public.
Strengthened collaborations with On Lok and the Shanti Project, expanding OCIH’s reach.
Enhanced accessibility for underserved patients, public class participants, and community organizations.
OCIH Cross-Program Collaborators
Denise V. Ruvalcaba, BA, Clinical Research Coordinator, brings expertise in creating multilingual and culturally relevant mind-body resources to Latine communities.
Selena Chan, DO, Associate Director of Clinical Programs and Director of Public Classes, faculty integrative psychiatrist, specializes in clinical mind-body health and attunement to Chinese communities.
Julia Burns, MA, Communications Specialist, ensures materials are accessible and distributed effectively.
Additional Collaborators
Two to four BIPOC Latine and Chinese advisors specializing in mind-body health within Cantonese-speaking and Spanish-speaking communities in San Francisco. These advisors will contribute their guidance and cultural expertise to ensure the content is accurate and relevant.
Spanish-Language Content and Cantonese-Language Content Contributors: They will develop, review, and ensure cultural/linguistic accuracy in videos
Jennifer Shea, MPH, will provide program feedback and quality improvement.
Kathleen Grusenski and Koren Wetmore, will review content for public-facing quality and ensure UCSF language stakeholders are involved.
UCSF Educational Technology Services (ETS) will produce high-quality, culturally sensitive content in videos.
UCSF Patient Communications Committee (PCC) will oversee written materials and translated content.
Health Care Providers in Chinese and Latine Medicine will be consulted on mind-body health for cultural sensitivity.
Collaborators are subject to change, and will be considered for cultural expertise in further tailoring resources.
Timeline: HOME Project (12/1/2024 - 11/30/2025)
Dec 2024: Kickoff meeting, pre-production planning
Jan- March 2025: Script and content development with bilingual experts
April-June 2025: Video production (Spanish and Cantonese)
June-July 2025: Editing
Aug 2025: Community feedback sessions
Sep 2025: Revisions
Oct-Nov 2025: Final revisions and public launch
Commenting is closed.
Comments
I fully support this proposal
I fully support this proposal to enhance integrative care at the Osher Clinic by creating multilingual meditation videos and translating existing resources. Given that 25% of San Francisco’s population has limited English proficiency, primarily speaking Spanish and Cantonese, this initiative is essential.
Expanding our resources to include new videos in Spanish and potentially Cantonese, and translating current materials, will significantly broaden our reach. This aligns with UCSF Osher’s vision to “nurture health and inspire the well-being of all people.” Making these tools accessible for independent use or as part of our group medical visits and public classes ensures inclusivity and enhances the quality of care we provide. This proposal will help us better serve our diverse community and solidify our leadership in integrative health services.
Please detail your
Please detail your collaborations, specifically, who will record, edit, and publish the videos? Who will teach the classes? Will the instructors be native Spanish and/or Cantonese speakers or will the classes be translated? Who will have access to the classes and how will they be disseminated?
I love this idea! I recommend
I love this idea! I recommend Educational Technology Services (ETS) as a video partner for this project. They are in-house and have expertise in filming and editing short videos. I second Marliese's questions -- who will teach the classes, and who will translate existing materials and resources?
I was recently advised by Kanopi (UCSF's web partner) that widgets like Google Translate create accessibility problems for sites, and Google may sunset their Google Translate entirely because most browsers come with a translate feature. I am curious how prevalent browser translators are among non-English speakers and if they are a useful existing tool for language accessiblity online. However, any published resources like PDFs, graphics, and videos will need to be translated an recreated, as existing web translators only work on web content -- not files.
I appreciate the details here
I appreciate the details here of why this needs to be new videos made for new audiences--not just auto-generated captions in multiple languages. Offering videos recorded in Chinese & Spanish will also increase accessibility for people with low literacy in those languages.
Having culturally and
Having culturally and linguistically alligned videos that are safe for patients is a valuable resources. Our integrative oncology program has started some work in this direction and could be a partner to collaborate with on this project. Good luck!
I support this proposal. I
I support this proposal. I don't know if our in-house UCSF interpreters are available to help with projects like these. I wonder if it's possible to have voice over in the language and/or Closed Caption language options over the videos we may already have. Unsure how much this would cost nor if this option is more or less expensive than hiring out Spanish-speaking instructors, etc.