Limited English proficiency
[2] The term "limited English proficiency"—together with the initialism "LEP"—was first used in 1975 following the U.S. Supreme Court decision Lau v. Nichols.
On August 11, 2000, President Bill Clinton signed Executive Order 13166, "Improving Access to Services for Persons with Limited English Proficiency."
[4] The guidebook is intended to determine how Limited English Proficient (LEP) students should participate in the Standards of Learning testing.
On October 6, 2011, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo issues Executive Order 26,[5] "Statewide Language Access Policy," requiring all "vital documents, including essential public documents such as forms and instructions provided to or completed by program beneficiaries or participates, be translated in the six most common non-English languages spoken by individuals with limited-English proficiency" across the state, based on U.S. Census data.
The New York State Division of Human Rights identifies those six languages[6] as Spanish, Chinese, Russian, Haitian Creole, Bengali and Korean.
[8] Limited English proficiency is associated with poorer health outcomes among Latinos, Asian Americans, and other ethnic minorities in the United States.
[9] Studies have found that women with LEP disproportionately fail to follow up on abnormal mammogram results, which may lead to increases in delayed diagnosis.
[13][14] Having patient-physician language discordant pairs (i.e. Spanish-speaking patient with an English-speaking physician) may also lead to greater medical expenditures and thus higher costs to the organization.
