En Familia: An intergenerational approach to improving health literacy among and delivering health education to Latino families

This paper presents the findings from an evaluation of En Familia, an intergenerational health literacy and health education program for Latino families. The reasons for Latino health disparities are manifold, and often compounded by the complexity of navigating the US health system and understanding health information. En Familia aims to help families overcome these barriers by expanding traditional health education programming to include training in core healthy literacy. To do so, En Familia draws on the Latino concept of familism and engages the teens, parents, and grandparents to support each other in making healthy lifestyle choices. In this paper, we explore three research questions that focus on the effectiveness of En Familia. They include: To what extent is En Familia effective in changing participants' knowledge about the health issues it covers? To what extent do En Familia participants have more positive attitudes about health related behaviors? To what extent does En Familia improve health literacy and intentions to perform health-related behaviors among participants? We collected primary quantitative data from 34 families in El Paso, Texas. We used a pretest/post-test quasi-experimental design to explore the statistical relationship between exposure to En Familia and dependent variables of its programmatic effectiveness. Findings suggest En Familia increases knowledge, positive attitudes towards healthy behaviors, and health literacy skills. The study findings more broadly indicate that traditional Latino health education programming can be enhanced by a health literacy component. Further, the paper suggests an intergenerational format utilizes familial social support to change attitudes on health topics.