Oscar’s mission is to make a healthier life accessible and affordable for all. In support of this goal, we launched Hola Oscar (opens in new tab): an immersive Spanish language program designed to better support our Hispanic and Latino members. The program, which is part of Oscar’s Culturally Competent Care (CCC) initiative, delivers socially and linguistically authentic experiences with cultural care matching and providers who speak the language.
Hispanic and Latino communities are the fastest-growing populations in the ACA (1), and make up about one-third of Oscar’s membership. It was important to us to provide a culturally authentic experience for these members, who are navigating a system that often fails to accommodate non-English speakers. According to a Pew Research study (opens in new tab), 44% of Hispanic adults cite communication problems due to language or cultural differences as a leading reason why Hispanic individuals generally have worse health outcomes than other adults in the US (2).
We created Hola Oscar to offer Spanish speakers personalized health experiences that can better serve their unique needs. To build the program, our teams worked to understand how a Spanish speaker interacts with Oscar. The Hola Oscar program was developed based on internal research conducted with Oscar’s diverse employee base and employee research groups, as well as focus groups with community partners. This approach aimed to understand the unique challenges faced by Hispanic and Latino communities and identify the most effective ways to connect with them.
Hola Oscar, which has an industry-leading NPS of 87, provides Spanish-speaking members with linguistically authentic experiences at every step of their healthcare journey. Our team created stylistic guides called “Voz y Tono” to ensure cultural and linguistic relevancy for all Spanish communications including: advertising and marketing with cultural signifiers, ongoing campaigns to influence healthy behavior, Spanish-first Welcome Kits, and resources to support Spanish-speaking brokers. We also built diverse provider networks to match members with Spanish-speaking providers, and support members with a Spanish-speaking Oscar Care Team made up of many native speakers.