Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #112503

Ana C. Canjura, BA¹, Suzanne Padilla, MA¹, C. Kevin Malotte, DrPH¹, Michael R. Cousineau, DrPH², and Lori Miller Nascimento, MPH². (1) Community Health and Social Epidemiology Programs, California State University, Long Beach, 5500 Atherton Street, Suite 400, Long Beach, CA 90815, 5629852179, acanjura@csulb.edu, (2) Department of Family Medicine, Division of Community Health, University of Southern California, Keck School of Medicine, 3716 South Hope Street, Suite 256, Los Angeles, CA 90007

In recent years there has been an increase in the involvement of volunteer community health workers (CHWs) in the implementation of health promotion interventions. Evidence suggests that CHWs can reach at-risk and hard-to-reach individuals, and successfully deliver health information because they share similar experiences, language, and culture with those being served. As part of a CDC-funded, community-based participatory research study, community members who volunteered as Health Leaders (HLs) worked with research staff to develop, implement, and evaluate an intervention designed to increase knowledge about parent-to-child communication about sex and sexuality. The HLs are monolingual, Spanish-speaking Latina women living in low-income and underserved areas in Long Beach, California. The HLs reported the lack of parent-to-child communication about sex as an important issue to be addressed in their community consisting predominantly of ethnic minorities, monolingual Spanish-speakers and recent immigrants. Culturally relevant presentation materials and activities were developed and the HLs were trained on how to conduct educational sessions (workshops) on Parents Talking to Children about Sex with other community members. The HLs promote the workshops primarily through word-of-mouth and the distribution of role-model story publications. The workshops are conducted in either one-on-one sessions or in groups with up to 20 participants in home and/or community-based settings. Community participants are asked by the HLs to complete brief pretest and posttest surveys assessing knowledge, beliefs, and intentions, as well as the quality of the session. Methods for promoting and conducting the workshops will be discussed in addition to feedback received from community participants.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session, the participants will be able to

• Describe outreach strategies used by the health leaders to promote educational sessions in their community.
• Describe workshop methods used by the health leaders to increase knowledge about parent-to-child communication about sex.
• Articulate key findings in the evaluation of educational sessions conducted by the health leaders.

Keywords: Community Health Promoters, Latinos

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.