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Using lay health workers: Case study of a community-based prenatal intervention

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Abstract

This article reports on the design and implementation of a prenatal outreach and education intervention for low income, Hispanic women living in three migrant and seasonal farmworker communities in Arizona. The program included three major elements: a Spanish language prenatal curriculum; a group of mature Hispanic women recruited from the target communities and trained as “Comienzo Sano” (healthy beginning) Promotoras (health promoters), and the organization of a support network of local health professionals. The rationale for the demonstration is reviewed, and the structure of the intervention is described. Factors which facilitated and constrained implementation of the program are identified, and guidelines are provided for other health care providers and health educators interested in developing similar programs.

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Authors and Affiliations

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Joel S. Meister is Director, Southwest Border Rural Health Research Center, Member, Arizona Cancer Center: Louise H. Warrick is Research Assistant Professor of Family Medicine; Jill Guernsey de Zapién is Program Coordinator of Community Health; Anita H. Wood is Research Assistant in Rural Health; all in the Department of Family and Community Medicine, College of Medicine, University of Arizona, Tucson, Arizona 85724.

The authors gratefully acknowledge the support and continued interest of the A.L. Mailman Family Foundation, which provided the initial funding for this project, of the March of Dimes, which has made possible the project's continuation by providing support for the promotoras, and of the Arizona Department of Health Services, Maternal and Child Health Division, for providing funding for the ongoing administration of the project. The Yuma County Health Department has provided the staff to supervise the program. We also wish to recognize the contribution made by the project's first coordinator and supervisor, W. Marie Roberts, RNP, CNP. During the latter phases of the project's first year, E. Lee Rosenthal, a graduate student intern from the School of Public Health, University of California at Berkeley, provided invaluable assistance, and, more recently, anthropological field work was conducted by Tamar Gottfried, a medical student at the University of Arizona.

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Meister, J.S., Warrick, L.H., de Zapién, J.G. et al. Using lay health workers: Case study of a community-based prenatal intervention. J Community Health 17, 37–51 (1992). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01321723

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