Process of Building Individual and Community Capacity for Providing Health Promotion: Shout-out Health

Creating opportunity for community members to identify issues and provide health promotion through informal social networks benefits participants and is an efficient dissemination mechanism for health information—particularly to difficult-to-reach members.

A theory-based process of autonomously supported community-participatory health promotion was pilot-tested then expanded to a sample of 57 women from two NJ cities. The intervention process included participants meeting to identify community health issues, development of the health messages, planning and dissemination of the health messages in the community, and discussion about the community encounters. Participants were given the choice of preparing for the community outreach in-person or online.

Participants provided health promotion outreach on 15 categories of health topics to approximately 5,861 women and youth in the community. Since the health topics were chosen by participants, they were personally important. Qualitative data indicate that benefits of participation included increased self-care of health awareness, connectedness, and satisfaction in helping others. No significant differences were found between groups for psychological empowerment scores and self-care behavior pre and post intervention. When empowerment scores and self-care behaviors were examined by motivational basis (k = .838, p <.05), participants categorized as autonomously motivated showed significant differences for productivity (M=51, SD=30; t (55) = 4.57, p <.05), psychological empowerment (p <.05), and sleep (p <.05) and follow-up medical care (p <.05) self-care behavior. Feedback from the community evaluations (n=74) was positive.

This approach to community-participatory health promotion can easily be integrated into community and clinical settings. Strategies for accomplishing this will be provided.