Role of promotoras (community health workers) as agents of change to promote healthy Latino communities

The Latino community is disproportionately impacted by the HIV/AIDS epidemic. The lack of prevention efforts focused on the unique risk experienced by this hard-to-reach population resulted in the development of a promotoras (community health worker) program entitled: Hablando Claro: Clear Talk. The goal of this intervention is to reduce the risk of HIV infection for intergenerational Latina dyads through a comprehensive 10 hour educational curriculum covering sexual health, HIV/AIDS, communication, domestic violence, and mental health. The promotoras have played vital role in development and implementation of this initiative. Utilizing community based participatory research techniques, the promotoras helped to develop culturally relevant health education modules. Additionally, the promotoras have received over 40 hours of training on the educational components as well as data collection and management, and the importance of evaluation. An achievement of this project has been the establishment of a Spanish-language Institutional Review Board (IRB) module developed in collaboration with the California State University Long Beach Office of University Research to provide IRB certification for promotoras. The comprehensive module contains information necessary to ensure that the promotoras are knowledgeable about how to protect and uphold the rights of potential participants utilizing research procedures. This new IRB module has allowed us to overcome the challenge of education and literacy issues that promotoras face, while at the same time strengthening research standards. This tool shows promise in building public health capacity as it serves as a successful module for other researchers working with community health workers to promote health Latino communities.