Promotora-researchers: Who we are and what we do

The Lower Rio Grande Valley (LRGV), along the Texas-Mexico border, remains one of the fastest growing areas in the U.S and its residents experience numerous social and health disparities. Mexican American families in the LRGV exhibit high rates of childhood and adult obesity, poverty, food insecurity, neighborhood deprivation, and locational disadvantages. To address these pervasive disparities, LRGV residents need culturally relevant and effective strategies; we have used one evidence-based strategy—promotoras/community health workers—combined with evidence-based public health research practices to develop a self-termed strategy entitled “promotora-researcher.” This presentation—led by promotora-researchers—will describe a variety of projects that have combined the tradition role of promotoras (health education, outreach, and promotion; translator/interpreter; needs assessment; and referrals) with highly trained public health research skills (protocol, training, and instrument development and validation; ethnographic methodologies; focus group moderation; data collection; instrument administration; manuscript development; and dissemination of research findings) to create “promotora-researchers.” The promotora-researchers will describe the types of projects (children's nutrition; adult food access; home business owners; community nutrition surveys; marketing of snack foods and sugar-sweetened beverages in small stores; and promotora-researcher developed cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship trainings targeting colonias residents and promotoras) and discuss their skills set, responsibilities, and roles and how being a promotora-researcher has provided personal transformation that is extending into behavioral transformation in their respective communities through these public health research studies.