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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Jacqueline Tran, MPH¹, Mary Anne Foo, MPH¹, Tu-Uyen Nguyen, PhD, MPH², Sora Park Tanjasiri, DrPH³, Marjorie Kagawa-Singer, PhD, RN, MN⁴, and Annalyn Valdez, MPH². (1) Orange County Asian and Pacific Islander Community Alliance, 12900 Garden Grove Blvd., Ste. 214A, Garden Grove, CA 92843, 714-636-9095, jtran@ocapica.org, (2) Department of Community Health Sciences, UCLA School of Public Health, P.O. Box 951772, Los Angeles, CA 92840, (3) Department of Health Science, California State University, Fullerton, 800 N. State College Blvd., Fullerton, CA 92834, (4) UCLA School of Public Health and Asian American Studies Center, 650 Charles Young Drive South, Los Angeles, CA 90095

The Promoting Access to Health for Pacific Islander and Southeast Asian Women is a community based participatory research program working with Cambodian, Laotian, Thai, Vietnamese, Chamorro, Samoan and Tongan women in Southern California. The program focused upon decreasing disparities related to breast and cervical cancer through community outreach, patient navigation, medical interpreting, health care provider training, policy and advocacy, and access to screening, treatment, and management. The CBPR program was led by several community organizations and university researchers were utilized as consultants to the program. The research included conducting 50+ page in-person interview (baseline, intervention and comparison) with more than 2,400 women in seven different languages. In addition, the project developed a publication policy where the community owns the data and are supported as main authors. Also, a community based IRB was established by the project. Although the program had great success, numerous challenges related to the research methodology occurred. This includes, ethical issues identified by the community in relation to the use of comparison groups (the delay of withholding information during the intervention period and not guaranteeing funds for the comparison communities once the intervention was completed). Survey challenges and follow-up with women were another challenge; for one population, more than 80% of the women moved. And for others, participating in the baseline and intervention interviews proved not to be a priority when one is trying to meet their basic living needs. This presentation will discuss the success of CBPR with underserved communities and the challenges of research methodology.

Learning Objectives: