Examining Strategies for Promotoras to Effectively Communicate Complex Health Information to Low-Income Latinos

Theoretical Background and research questions/hypothesis:  Nonprofit community-based health organizations have adopted new approaches to attempt to reduce health disparities for vulnerable and disadvantaged populations, such as low-income Latinos. For example, an increasing number of community-based nonprofits that serve low-income Latinos use promotoras or community lay health workers to provide outreach on the availability of health services (see Staten et al. 2005). The promotora approach may reduce health disparities among Latino immigrants by increasing access to care and decreasing their anxiety of navigating the institutional health care system (Swider 2002). Despite the growing prevalence of promotora-delivered health care by nonprofit organizations, there are little systematic data on the components of effective promotora programs and no well-tested empirical models that explain their common elements. In particular, there is little that is systematically known about the most effective communication methods for promotoras to reach their target population. Indeed, although using promotoras from community settings may help to overcome language barriers for low-income Latinos in accessing health care, the promotoras must be able to clearly and accurately articulate often complex medical information for it to be useful. The proposed paper begins to fill this knowledge gap by addressing three research questions. First, what common strategies are used by promotoras to communicate with low-income Latinos? Second, to what extent are these common strategies effective in communicating complex health information? Third, how can these common strategies be improved to provide more effective communication between promotoras and low-income Latinos?

Methods: To explore these questions, we received funding from the National Cancer Institute of the National Institutes of Health to conduct an environmental scan of scholarly and practitioner literature on promotora programs and to collect primary data from interviews with a national sample of key informants and promotoras at community-based nonprofits that run promotora programs.

Results:  The paper reports the analytical results of these two data collection approaches to present a theoretical model that incorporates communication-based “best practices” into a testable promotora program.

Conclusions:  As community-based nonprofit health providers increase their use of promtoras programs, systematic and empirical information is needed to help foster effective communication between promotoras and low-income Latinos. This paper aims to begin to provide that information.

Implications for research and/or practice:  The results of paper will contribute to the academic literature on nonprofit community-based health delivery and provide practitioners with vital empirical information upon which they may base the development and implementation of promotoras programs to reach Latinos with community-based health care.