Background: During the COVID-19 pandemic, the importance of providing culturally and linguistically appropriate care is elevated because of the disproportionate impacts that COVID-19 infections and mortality have on the populations who struggle with language and intercultural barriers. If individuals have limited dominant language proficiency and do not understand public health messaging this endangers the entire population. Although Austria and Canada both have significant levels of immigration, the Canadian Multiculturalism Act has resulted in a stronger commitment to services and communication that are responsive to individual cultural health beliefs and practices, preferred languages as well as health literacy levels. Thus, the aim of this study is to examine the extent to which health services related to COVID-19 are both culturally and linguistically appropriate as well as health literate in the respective countries.

Methods: A content analysis of national and provincial websites was conducted as well as expert interviews to examine whether health communication and services are provided in multiple languages to those with diverse backgrounds.

Results: Both Austrian and Canadian governments at the provincial and national levels have made efforts to provide culturally and linguistically appropriate services that cater to varying levels of health literacy. The range of languages that services are being provided in Canada is much broader than in Austria. The information from the campaign Österreich Impft (Austria vaccinates) has been translated into 14 languages, however the speakers featured in the campaign videos are all native German speakers and there is an absence of visible diversity. According to experts, this campaign addresses individuals with migration background poorly. In comparison, Canadian videos on social media feature visible minorities and are translated into multiple languages. Another major difference between the two countries is that the health hotlines in Canadian provinces which allow residents to speak to a health professional are available in over 130 languages while the health hotlines in Austrian provinces are officially only available in German.

Conclusion: Although efforts are being made in Austria there is a lot of room for improvement. In Canada services cater more to patients’ cultural health beliefs and communication needs.