 | The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
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| The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA |
Nora Liendo, RN, BSN, University of Texas at Brownsville, 80 Fort Brown, Brownsville, TX 78520, 956-982-0202, nmontalvo@utb.edu
Too often we hear the outcry of a child years after enduring abuse and realize that it could have been prevented had we reached the child or the parents early on. Research has shown that lay health workers or promotoras are effective in reaching families with health promotion messages. A training program for promotoras to prevent child abuse and neglect will be discussed. The priority population for the training program is promotoras in Brownsville, Texas who will conduct outreach to primarily Hispanic families living below the poverty level with at least one child in the household. Mano-A-Mano is an outreach agency that conducts training and health promotion activities through door-to-door outreach efforts of promotoras. This agency collaborated to allow their promotoras to be trained on the topic of child abuse and neglect prevention. Social Cognitive Theory was used as the theoretical foundation for the promotora training and suggested outreach strategies. The presentation will discuss components of the training, the outreach strategies to be used by the promotoras, and the evaluation measures that were gathered to assess the training's effectiveness. Collaboration between public health nursing professionals and child advocacy agencies is essential to address child abuse and neglect. In the future, the outreach efforts of the promotoras may be expanded throughout the colonias in Brownsille and across the Mexican border in its sister city of Matamoros, Tamps.
Learning Objectives:
Keywords: Child Health Promotion,
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.