En Familia: Families Partnering for Health

This paper describes En Familia, a five session, intergenerational, health literacy skills-building program for low-income Latino families on the topic of access to health care. Latinos in the United States (US) disproportionately experience health disparities and barriers to accessing care, including lack of culturally appropriate health information and limited knowledge of the US health care system. For implementation at Latino-serving community-based organizations, En Familia uses engaging, participatory activities to improve families’ positive attitudes, confidence, and health literacy skills to find, use, and understand health care services and information.

We evaluated the effectiveness En Familia to assess the extent to which exposure to the program relates to positive changes in families’ attitudes, self-efficacy, health literacy skills, and family communication related to finding, using, and understanding health care services and information.

We collected primary data from a total of 50 families including 100 adults and 49 at three community-based organizations. We used a pretest/post-test quasi-experimental design to explore the statistical relationship between exposure to En Familia and dependent variables of the program’s efficacy. Findings suggest En Familia increases low-income Latino families’ positive attitudes, self-efficacy, and health literacy skills to find, use, and understand health care services and information. In follow up interviews, a sample of participants also reported improvements in family communication. More broadly, the findings suggest that En Familia is an effective and useful program with the potential to improve the health literacy of low-income Latino families.