Efficacy of a healthmessages peer to peer program for people with intellectual disabilities

Little information exists regarding persons with intellectual disabilities (ID) in health promotion and protection research serving as peer health workers. Incorporating peer mentoring literature, health promotion needs of people with ID, and knowledge of community stakeholders, we designed a Peer to Peer HealthMessages Program (PtP-HMP) for people with ID to become Healthy Lifestyle Coaches (HLCs) and teach a 12-week Health Messages Program to their peers in community-based settings. This presentation will present the development of the PtP-HMP for people with ID which employed mixed methods and the results of the 1 day HealthMessages Train the Trainer Workshop that was conducted in two states for Special Olympic athletes with ID and mentors using a pretest/posttest design. Preliminary result from the HealthMessages Workshop for HLCs with ID (n=20) and their mentors (n=18) demonstrated significant findings for HLCs across measures of self-efficacy (t = -2.1; p < .05) and knowledge (t = -2.1; p < .01). While not significant, the mean scores for the health advocacy scale improved following the training. Results from the mentors for each of the HLCs also demonstrated significant findings for self-efficacy (t = -2.8; p < .01) and health advocacy (t = -2.2; p < .05). Results provide promising support for the role of people with ID as peer health workers. HLCs and their mentors are currently implementing the 12-week PtP-HMP to their peers in their community and program evaluations will be conducted in each state to determine the impact of the PtP-HMP on SO peer athletes.