Background
Methods
Study sites
Sample recruitment and characteristics
Rural Latino Community | Urban Latino Community | American Indian Community | Total | |
---|---|---|---|---|
N = 7 | N = 10 | N = 9 | N = 26 | |
Mean (SD) | Mean (SD) | Mean (SD) | Mean (SD) | |
Age (years) | 48 (12) | 49 (9) | 51 (8) | 49 (9) |
Time Involved with Community (years) | 10 (9) | 12 (6) | 21 (22) | 14 (13) |
n
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n
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n
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n
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Female | 4 | 10 | 6 | 20 |
Immigrant | 5 | 8 | n/a | 13 |
American Indian | 0 | 0 | 9 | 9 |
Latino | 7 | 9 | 0 | 16 |
White, non-Latino | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 |
Data collection
Question | Level of ecological framework targeted |
---|---|
Introduction | |
1. How long have you worked/lived in [name of agency or community]? | N/A |
Meaning of Good Health | |
First, I want you to think about your own health and life. | Intra-Personal |
2. What do you consider “good health”? | |
3. What do you think it means to live a healthy lifestyle? | |
Now I want you think about [insert name of community]. I’d like for you to think about the community residents that you see every day and interact with either personally or for your job. I also want you to think about the community’s physical environment, stores, restaurants, health and human services, community programs, and so on. | Community/Institutional |
4. What does it mean for a community to be “healthy”? | |
5. Do you consider your community to be healthy? | |
6. How would you rate the health of this community as a whole on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent? | |
Probe: What factors did you take into account with your rating? | |
Enabling and Inhibiting Factors of Good Health | |
7. What are the values around being healthy in this community? | Inter-Personal |
8. What are the unique characteristics (strengths) in [insert name of community] that help residents in being healthy? | |
Probe: What other characteristics within this community support being healthy? | |
9. What are the unique characteristics (weaknesses) in [insert name of community] that prevent residents from being healthy? | |
Probe: What other characteristics within your community discourage residents from being healthy? | |
10. Which of these characteristics, good and not good, are specific to the [insert Native/MSFW/Latino] culture in this community? | |
11. What are the biggest (or most important/pressing) health-related concerns in this community? | Community/Institutional |
Probe: In your point of view, what are the factors that contribute to these health problems? | |
12. What resources are available or in place in [insert name of community] to support healthy living among the residents? | Macro Level/Public Policy |
Probe: How much are these resources used by community residents? | |
Probe: How widely known are these resources by community residents? | |
Wrap Up | |
13. What are other important health issues in this community that we have not discussed so far? | All |
Data analyses
Results
Content findings
Meaning of good health
Enabling and inhibiting factors of good health
I am realizing that this area is a very dangerous zone. Gangs, right? That can also influence… in some ways well the families don’t leave their homes. The families that want to take care of their health and it’s night and around here they can [be] assault[ed]…It’s a factor in this area that really harms the mental health, above all, of our children.
I think from what I have seen also, it’s around family. The idea of being healthy is connected to the value of having a strong family, having a happy family, being able to provide for the basic necessities [if] they can provide what their children need, then…their children are being healthy and their family is being healthy.
Most important health-related concerns
Thematic findings
Social connectedness
I think it’s important for them [residents] to stay healthy, not just in their family but in their community….Everybody’s concerned about sharing the healthy information to people so it is something that….that they understand needs to be thought about in order to have a healthy community, a healthy family, healthy children.
Trauma
Well, the loss of their language, the loss of their way of life, the violence perpetrated on them, you know. And I mean we’re talking hundreds of years, but the violence perpetrated to get them into reservations, taking away their self-respect. Violence was committed on them by others, perpetuated on each other by themselves, alcoholism, you know, all those kinds of things that break families and has never been addressed or talked about.
But many of them [immigrants], you know, come from Mexico. Many of them, they get arrested. Some people experience bad [things] when they are crossing the [border] or they experience being sexual[ly] assault[ed]. Other experiences, who knows. There are so many things they’ve been collecting on their way here, to this dream, you know, is going to affect their lifestyle and is going to affect their health.
Oftentimes, as the kids see and witness domestic violence in the home, they later in life kinda turn things against mom…so there’s a lot of factors that come into play when it comes to literally living a healthy lifestyle.
Invisibility
…Often workers talk about feeling as though [in the] places that they work, the livestock or the crops are more valued than they are. I mean not everyone speaks in this sense, but it’s a common sense in many workers. – Participant from the rural Latino community…A lot of it is the elders in our community don’t have transportation or because of their health situation…they need to be seen by a doctor…and not be overlooked…That’s the kind of concern that I’m getting calls [about]. – Participant from the American Indian community
No, because of access, cost, the economics of health care and the fact that they [farmworkers] are really not recognized or appreciated for what they do. They’re looked upon more as just a labor force instead of people…. I see a lot of the men out here, the day laborers that we have, who can’t afford to have good health care. Many of them are undocumented so there’s a lot of places that receive federal funds that can’t assist them because of their documented status.