We're not low income latinos - we are rural mexicans living in san jose, California: Implications for health education when priority populations define themselves

Resources abound for culturally sensitive programs designed for and with Latino populations. Our community-university partnership, Salud Familiar en McKinley, is designed with enduring commitments to emergent reality, community participation, reciprocity, and respect. Of the many things that the diverse and multicultural university side of the partnership (faculty and students) was worried about as the program came together in 2006-07, being able to work effectively with the low income, Latino population of the school community was not on our radar. Indeed, we assumed that we “knew” this population and that cultural competency would be natural for us. In the second year of our work together, one of the mothers told the class of college students “Some people call us low income Latino immigrants, but that's not us. We are rural Mexicans who are living in San José, California”. This reframing subtly but fundamentally changed the orientation of our work together. What it means for priority populations to define themselves became critically important and appropriately (re-)centered in our program design, implementation, and evaluation. This reframing also made salient the almost accidental but ongoing relationship our department had established with a pueblo in southern Mexico, both for lessons learned for health education and for the opportunity for immersion and exchange in a cultural context not unlike the home and point of reference of our community partners. This presentation will compare the two identity paradigms – low income Latino immigrants and rural Mexicans living in the U.S. – and their implications for effective interventions.