Project Summary
Members of the Hispanic community are disproportionately affected by the lack of access to basic health resources. This is even more pronounced for those who are low-income or recent immigrants because of language barriers, acculturation issues, and undocumented immigration status. These groups are more likely to lack the health literacy skills needed to make informed decisions about their health. These groups also lack knowledge about scientific research and are skeptical about participating in research activities. As a result, their research needs may be under-represented.
In 2015, we founded a community outreach group called The Power to Decide/El Poder de Decidir for underserved communities including the Spanish-speaking underserved community. Our mission is to empower these communities to make informed choices concerning their health and well-being, by providing them with the knowledge and skills needed to recognize the resources available to them. This project seeks to leverage this existing group to educate the Hispanic community about scientific research and to encourage research partnership to generate comparative effectiveness research (CER) priorities in asthma. The project tasks and activities include: 1) recruiting community meeting participants; 2) creating educational materials for community meetings; 3) hosting monthly community meetings to educate participants about research partnerships and scientific research; and to generate CER priorities in asthma; 4) creating a seven-person research advisory board; 5) creating and managing an “outreach web page” for participants to stay connected between community meetings; and 6) generating a final report about Hispanics’ CER priorities in asthma.