When Maureen Damitz recounts conversations with some Guatemalan doctors in Chicago, the story she tells is partly absurd and partly outrageous.

Asthma education materials intended for Spanish speakers, the doctors told her, barely resemble the language.

“When they read most of the stuff that’s published here, it’s not translated correctly,” says Damitz, senior director of programs for the Respiratory Health Association of Metropolitan Chicago. “They’d read it in Spanish, but it wouldn’t make sense.”

The cultural and language barriers that hinder asthma education in Chicago’s diverse minority communities were the subject of a series of town hall meetings facilitated by the nonprofit Chicago Asthma Consortium. The group conducted six meetings in Humboldt Park, Englewood and Albany Park this month, and sought to get feedback from community members who don’t often get an opportunity to share their perspective.

“Part of it was, ‘Let’s hear from the patient’s perspective. Let’s hear from various communities.’ Listening to them for a change, instead of guessing,” Damitz says.

“It doesn’t do any good for those of us who work in the community but don’t live there to tell them what the issues are,” says Joel Massel, executive director of the Chicago Asthma Consortium. “It’s not fair.”

The focus groups helped organizers identify several key factors in how minority communities are affected by assumptions, language barriers and a lack of knowledge about asthma treatments. They were conducted in English, Spanish and Gujarati, an Indian dialect spoken by some in Albany Park.

“The first thing we learned is that people are unaware of the benefits they receive under public aid,” Massel says. “One of the biggest issues we heard in every community was the issue of lack of public transportation (to treatment centers).”

Massel says the solution to many of the issues facing minority communities, especially those that speak a language other than English, is to improve communication.

“One of the things that a lot of these communities don’t have and what they’re asking for is basic information in the right language and the right literacy level that talks about chronic disease,” he says.

It’s a simple solution, says Massel, and he can’t believe more studies have not been conducted on the issue.

“It seems like it’s so basic and so rudimentary,” he says.

Damitz hopes the work the Chicago Asthma Consortium is doing will cross over to the way information is shared about other diseases, like cancer and diabetes.

The Chicago Asthma Consortium is hosting a forum on asthma disparity with Assistant U.S. Surgeon General James Galloway on April 21 at the University Center in the South Loop. The forum will last from 8 a.m. to noon, at 525 South State.