Perspectives of Medical Providers on the Training of Community Health Navigators: Health Systems Implications and Policy Recommendations

Our project is the first community-based participatory research study to investigate how community health workers and breast health navigators helped to guide patients from four Southeast Asian communities in Southern California throughout the entire cancer care continuum. Our collaborative goal was to identify how community health navigators address cultural differences and systemic barriers to effectively navigate low-income Southeast Asian (SEA) women (Cambodian, Laotian, Thai and Vietnamese) to obtain breast health care services from initial screening exams throughout diagnosis, treatment, and recovery. We explored our research questions by studying the perspectives of three groups: community health navigators, Southeast Asian women/patients, and their providers.

We conducted focus groups with 110 SEA women representing different stages of the care continuum; and qualitative, semi-structured, in-depth interviews with 15 providers and 10 community health navigators to achieve three research aims: 1) Identify how health navigation services enable SEA women to seek breast health services, 2) Describe the roles, skills, and personal qualities of community health navigators, and 3) Identify the essential elements needed to develop a navigation training curriculum.

We focus on study findings from provider interviews in defining the role of community health navigators, analyze how community health navigators bridge access to health care, and discuss health systems and policy recommendations to institutionalize community health navigation. Most hospitals or private offices did not have navigator training programs in place. Finding resources to better support trained community health navigators would be an important contribution to improve the quality of health care, especially for underserved populations.