Nearly 23% of New York City's population indicated having limited English proficiency in 2022, resulting in a strong need for language services in a variety of settings. Of particular interest is the healthcare setting, where effective communication between medical professionals and patients is crucial to providing quality care, establishing trust, and promoting patient compliance. As a Hispanic Serving Institution with seven (7) health programs that house about 20% of the college's enrollment, the NYC College of Technology/CUNY is well situated to train English-Spanish bilingual students from the health and helping professions to be language-concordant professionals. With this in mind, the Humanities and Health Sciences Departments teamed up in 2024 to develop a Spanish medical interpretation academic minor. The objectives were to increase enrollment and retention, to train students to address language barriers in health settings, to prepare students for medical interpreter certification, and to enrich the Humanities curriculum while enhancing the health professions with Humanities skills. A survey was distributed to students to gauge their interest. Among 94 respondents, 51 (54%) were interested in a medical interpretation certificate and 37 (39%) were interested in obtaining a medical interpretation job. This information was shared in the academic minor's proposal. This presentation will detail the collaboration between the Humanities and Health Sciences to bring the proposal to fruition. The goal is to share the benefits of establishing the role of the Humanities in building skills essential to health careers and to share strategies for engaging in interdisciplinary collaborations.

Keywords: Curriculum, Interdisciplinary, Humanities, Health Sciences, Medical Interpretation, Collaboration.