A male promotores network for Latinos: Lessons learned from a CBPR project

Background: “New growth communities” (NGC), areas with low (<5%), yet growing, concentrations of Latinos represent 20% of all U.S. Latinos–10 million-. In NGC, Latinos are often isolated and few services address their specific cultural and language needs. There is scarce research on the effectiveness of male promotores and similar health promotion efforts in NGC. This CBPR project is based on a partnership of health and social service providers, community members and university researchers. This presentation describes the lessons learned during the implementation of this promotores network. Methods: Based on a 2010 assessment, the promotores network was structured such that there were 6 main and 5 alternate promotores. They were trained with a 20-hour curriculum to reach Latino immigrant men through social networks and provide help finding, connecting and referring them to health and social service, religious, and educational organizations. Results: Within the first 3 months, the promotores have: stayed involved in the program, successfully recruited 90 clients, gained media attention, developed leadership and trained their peers in areas of their acquired expertise (e.g., housing, human trafficking). Some challenges included not being able to: hire undocumented promotores, assess promotores' skills during training, fairly distribute work hours among promotores, and financially support innovative suggestions from promotores. Promotores reported experiencing stress treating severely ill or injured clients, and faced distrust by clients' employers . Conclusions: The CBPR approach fostered initiative empowering promotores; however, considerable flexibility was required to modify the original plan to better suit community needs while staying within a given budget.