Basic Information

Name: Lisa Diamond
Title: Associate Attending Physician
Institution: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center
Discipline: Medicine
Years of experience: 15

Research

Primary methodological research approach:

• Minorities / disadvantaged population
• Patient-centeredness
• Patient–provider relationship
• Health equity related to language barriers

Focus of research in communication and healthcare:

• Mixed methods
• Observational studies
• Qualitative methods
• (Quasi-)experiential designs
• RCT
• Systematic literature review
• Test development/validation studies

Description

Three keywords describing expertise and interest:

1. Language concordance
2. patient-clinician communication

Description of field of expertise, major interests, and consultation topics:

Language concordance: impact on care and outcomes, ways to measure/standardize, creation of a tool to measure proficiency/readiness to use language skills in clinical care
Access to clinical trials for cancer patients with a preferred language other than English
Use of patient portals by cancer patients with a preferred language other than English

Brief biography:

Lisa Diamond is a member of the research faculty of the Immigrant Health and Cancer Disparities Service, which facilitates linguistically and culturally sensitive health care services for newcomer populations through research, education, training, program development, policy, and advocacy. Her research focuses on understanding how clinician non-English language proficiency affects the quality of care delivered to patients with limited English proficiency (LEP).

Ultimately, she plans to use the results of her research to establish standards for the appropriate use of non-fluent non-English language skills by clinicians and to identify process and outcome measures that capture the quality of cancer care being delivered to LEP patients.