Linking Individual Needs to Community and Clinical Services

Over the past 15 years, CDC-funded AzPRC researchers have strengthened collaborations with community partners while developing and implementing comprehensive diabetes prevention and control programs (1998-2019), and policy intervention research (2009-2014) in Southern Arizona border communities. The community health worker (CHW)-led diabetes programs were successful in terms of community perception and health improvements. Despite this success, disparities in chronic disease remained unacceptably high. The investigators developed and implemented an innovative intervention research project, Acción Para La Salud (Acción), which engaged CHWs in community-level advocacy to empower border communities to address root causes of chronic disease. This community-based participatory research (CBPR) project recognized the importance of addressing the social determinants of health to overcome health disparities in chronic disease. The investigators have published results and processes of Acción.

Chronic disease and obesity health disparities continue to disproportionately affect Hispanic populations along the U.S. Mexico border in part due to barriers to healthful nutrition, adequate physical activity, and mental/emotional well-being as well as insufficient access to culturally appropriate health care services. In collaboration with our border-wide Community Action Board (CAB), the investigators are taking our intervention expertise one step further by developing and testing novel CHW-led interventions that will link community and clinical services.

In recent years, federally qualified community health centers (FQHCs), a major backbone of the primary care system in reaching under-served populations across the US, have begun to involve the CHW model into various services, often with a focus on chronic disease prevention and control. While CHWs help improve the quality and cultural relevancy of health care, improve patient centered care, and improve linkages between primary care and community services, each clinic adapts practices within their clinic environment without clear guidelines about best practices, or concrete evidence regarding activities best shown to lead to improvement in health outcomes. In addition, there may not be clear linkages from the clinic to CHW programs in the community that have been shown to be effective in chronic disease control and prevention, and there are challenges in identifying mechanisms for the sustainability of effective clinical or community programs. Our intervention research proposes to fill these gaps by establishing clear guidance and best practices for CHW involvement in primary care and community settings to prevent and manage chronic disease, and to promote mental/emotional well-being.