Before You Call 911 is a community health navigation initiative offering free, bilingual workshops and reference materials that teach immigrant families how to use the American emergency medical system effectively and confidently.
The project grew out of volunteer ESL conversation sessions at the Jones Library in Amherst, Massachusetts, where it became clear that language barriers and fear of the system kept immigrant families from calling 911 in genuine emergencies. Many worried about cost, immigration consequences, or simply not knowing what to say in English.
The result is a bilingual toolkit designed to be practical, dignified, and durable: a reference card you keep by your phone, and a workshop where you practice what to say before you ever need to say it. The pilot serves Mandarin-speaking adult ESL learners, with plans to expand to Nepali, Khmer, Farsi, Russian, and Portuguese.
All materials are open-licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Anyone can download, translate, adapt, and redistribute them. The goal is not to scale one person’s effort, but to build an excellent toolkit that existing professional networks can distribute through channels they already control.
Before You Call 911 was created by Anna Y. Wang (Amherst College Class of 2028), a native bilingual English/Mandarin speaker who brings her emergency medical training and clinical interpreting experience to this work.
Anna has interpreted for patients, families, and physicians in the emergency room at Beijing United Family Hospital, where she saw firsthand how language barriers shape medical outcomes. At Amherst, she serves as an NREMT-certified EMT on the College EMS team, responding to campus emergencies. She holds a Medical Interpreter Certificate and is the Editor-in-Chief of The Amherst Student.