"The World" -- a production of BBC World Service, PRI and WGBH Boston -- on Tuesday profiled a program in Baltimore that teaches pregnant, undocumented immigrants about public health care benefits. Kathleen Westcoat -- president of Baltimore HealthCare Access, a division of Baltimore's Health Department whose mission is to assist residents in using public benefits more effectively -- said that undocumented immigrants are "often very reluctant to sign up for public benefits because of fears of deportation and ... other issues." In addition, problems result because pregnant Latina women often have little or no English-language proficiency, and many Latina women give their children both parents' surnames, which causes administrative confusion, according to Westcoat. PRI reports that the program teaches several lessons, such as that all immigrants -- documented and undocumented -- have the right to an interpreter at any medical center that receives federal funding and that children born to immigrants in the U.S. might qualify for Medicaid. The segment also includes comments from a graduate student at Johns Hopkins University's Bloomberg School of Public Health who created a Spanish-language soap opera to educate Latina women about health care access and an immigrant woman who watched the soap opera (Desai, "The World," PRI, 4/4).

The complete segment is available online in Windows Media.