Planning and building a healthy environment integrating community health workers/promotores de salud

Project HEART (Health Education Awareness Research Team) is an NIH-funded community-based participatory research project to reduce risk factors for cardiovascular disease in Hispanics in El Paso, Texas lower Rio Grande Valley. The project integrates community health workers/promotores de salud to link Hispanic families to local –sponsored life style and environmental activities drawn together under one umbrella to be known as Mi Corazon, Mi Comunidad (MiCMiC)(My Heart, My Community). This presentation reports on the phase two of this project in its fourth year which has now added two new partners (YWCA and Parks and Recreation Department) to emphasize a series of fitness/exercise and nutrition-related activities under MiCMiC family of programs. Specifically, this presentation will describe several components of building the strategy for creating culturally-tailored programs over a three-year intervention period. These components are: 1) development of an inventory of fitness and nutrition programs available from the YWCA and Parks and Recreation; 2) formulation of a curricula that includes the programs selected from the inventory for MiCMiC; 3) development the interface of promotores de salud to lead the efforts of recruitment, enrollment and monitoring of participants receiving an expected set of minimum activities within a 6-month period of the MiCMiC family of programs; 4) evaluating the intervention efforts by building outcome data using different methods including: a) a health-card passport-type tool to record changes in body mass index, blood pressure, waist circumference; and b) pre-post questionnaire assessments to track a variety of health-related behavioral constructs associated with fitness and nutrition.