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

Abstract #63664

Jeremiah Mock, MSc, PhD¹, Kim H. Nguyen, BS¹, Hiep Doan, MD¹, Tram Lam, BS¹, Ky Q. Lai, MD, MPH¹, Thoa Nguyen¹, Tung T. Nguyen, MD², and Stephen J. McPhee, MD³. (1) Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project, University of California, San Francisco, 44 Page St., Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102, 415-476-0557, jpmock@itsa.ucsf.edu, (2) Division of General Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 400 Parnassus Avenue, Box 0320, San Francisco, CA 94143, (3) Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project, Division of General Internal Medicine, University of California, San Francisco, 44 Page Street, Suite 500, San Francisco, CA 94102

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is gaining favor as an approach for identifying and solving health problems relevant to communities. Because historically, many Asian Pacific Islanders have not participated in research, we have encountered challenges in implementing CBPR with a Vietnamese-American community. In 1999, the Vietnamese REACH for Health Initiative Coalition and UCSF Vietnamese Community Health Promotion Project created a lay health worker program as one component of a comprehensive CDC-funded REACH project designed to prevent cervical cancer among Vietnamese-American women in Santa Clara County, California. Researchers collaborated with 3 community-based organizations (CBOs) that serve Vietnamese-Americans. The CBOs each recruited and trained 10 lay health workers (LHWs) who, in turn, recruited 20 Vietnamese-American women (n=600) from their social networks. LHWs educated women about cervical cancer and Pap screening. To identify factors that facilitate, limit or complicate lay health worker and women's participation in this CBPR project, we collected qualitative data through observations, interviews, and LHW feedback sessions. We identified 3 domains that positively or negatively impacted Vietnamese-American women's participation: the social-cultural domain (e.g., Vietnamese women's sense of civic responsibility vs. their unfamiliarity with research constructs); the organizational domain (e.g., CBO reputation and leadership vs. their management capacities); and the structural domain (e.g., researchers desire to encourage participation vs. human subjects regulations). With guidance from the Coalition and community members, we modified our CBPR approach, LHW training sessions, and implementation protocol to fit the socio-cultural, organizational and structural contexts. Communities benefit when CBPR is adapted to the contexts in which participants live.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to:
• understand how a lay health worker outreach program is organized,
• conceptualize how to use qualitative research methods to study participation,
• identify factors that hinder or facilitate women's participation in a community-based participatory research project.

Keywords: Cancer Screening, Participatory Research

Related Web page: www.healthisgold.org

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.