Your experience is a powerful example of how much farther we have to go to ensure that health services meet people's needs. Your work with the community is important intervention work to disseminate health information, and I think could also be used to promote empowerment in the health encounter. Some work has been done, for example, around how to empower patients to ask question of their providers or to ensure that their priorities in the visit are addressed. I am not aware of whether this has been done particularly with respect to disparities and non-English speaking patients, but it would be interesting to see. I imagine Alicia Fernandez, who gave our health care disparities lecture, might have some insight into this if you are interested.
Your work with charlas does draw on many of the same strengths as the barbershop intervention, although I would argue you are taking a far more community empowerment/engagement approach, and therefore will have a deeper understanding of the needs of the community.