(Los Angeles Times) – A 2002 state bill — which took nearly two decades to implement — made it possible for Mexican doctors such as Perusquia to work in California amid a chronic shortage of Spanish-speaking physicians. Latinos make up about 40% of the state population but just 6% of licensed physicians. The language and cultural gaps are felt most acutely in the vast rural stretches of California’s Central Coast and Central Valley, where immigrants from Mexico and Central America are integral to the farming economy. Hospitals and healthcare clinics that tend to farmworkers and their families routinely struggle to recruit and retain English-speaking physicians, let alone attract doctors who speak Spanish and Indigenous languages. (Read More)