The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #61325

Suzanne Christopher, PhD, Adina Smith, PhD, Alma Knows His Gun McCormick, and Shane Doyle, BS. Department of Health and Human Development, Montana State University, 104 Hosaeus Complex, Bozeman, MT 59717, 406-994-6321, suzanne@montana.edu

Messengers for Health is a community-based health project with the goals of increasing the proportion of Apsáalooke women who receive a Pap test and who have an understanding of cervical health topics such as who should receive a Pap test and risk factors for cervical cancer. We use a lay health advisor (LHA) approach. Twenty-six women identified as natural helpers in the Apsáalooke community attended a workshop on conducting one-on-one and group outreach, cervical health, and other topics. We call these LHAs Messengers. In their everyday activities and encounters with women, they spread information about cervical health and encourage women to receive a Pap test. This presentation focuses on methods used to gather process evaluation information on the Messengers’ activities. Many LHA interventions have struggled with identifying practical methods for documenting LHA activities. One reason is that LHAs do outreach work as a part of their everyday activities. This outreach may not be seen as a separate job or task, so documenting these activities may not be a natural action. There has been an evolution of evaluation methods in this project with the purpose of finding methods that are relevant to the Apsáalooke culture, useable to the Messengers, and to the project. Project staff and Messengers worked together over time on this task. We will discuss the progression of different methods and strategies used to collect information, share the benefits and barriers of these methods, and describe how this process information was used to improve the project.

Learning Objectives:

• - identify some of the barriers to collecting process evaluation information in lay health advisor projects
• - recall the different methods used in the Messengers for Health project to gather process evaluation on lay health advisor activities
• - describe practices used to make evaluation methods relevant to the Apsáalooke culture
• - relate how this process evaluation information was used to improve the project.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Disclosure not received
Relationship: Not Received.