Community participation: How promotores de salud are part of a system of care to change clinical outcomes for chronic disease in El Paso, Texas

This NIH-funded project has developed a comprehensive outreach process utilizing Community Health Workers/promotores de salud (CHW/P) as a central component of service delivery in bringing health education to Hispanic families and related health activities to brake the cycle of behaviors that lead to stroke and heart disease. The goal of this research is to create and unite strong partnerships in the El Paso community to strengthen the capacity of CHW/P to work together with other community partners to prevent and control chronic diseases common in the U.S. – Mexico border region. Many partners are involved including: the University of Texas at El Paso, the UT Houston School of Public Health, El Paso Regional Campus, El Paso Community College, and Centro San Vicente Clinic. The ultimate goal of our project is to engage local CHW/P in networking in order to work together to build the capacity of CHW/Ps in the region and to set the stage for policy change to better support CHW/Ps in the health and human services system. We have initiated a strong community-based participatory research effort to engage the community to build a community “momentum” for the project. We have completed several steps in building community capacity. These are: 1) completed 3 focus groups to engage community participants in a dialogue about their health concerns; 2) engage the team in a photo voice empowerment activity to build “momentum”; 3) conducted a community forum of promotoras showcasing their “best practice approaches”; 4) created a community advisory board targeting the lower valley of El Paso as the focus area of community-based participation; 5) begun the process of refinement of the pilot intervention using feedback from the community advisory board; 6) introduced the pilot project to the community through a community forum.