Por La Vida taking action for tobacco free communities
Abstracts
Initial Award Abstract |
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The recent California Tobacco Surveys provide information about tobacco use in Latinos. Cigarette smoking prevalence and nicotine dependence is lower among Latinos compared to non-Latino whites. This difference in cigarette smoking prevalence is primarily due to lower smoking rates by Latinas compared to non-Latina whites. However, exposure to environmental tobacco smoke is higher among Latino non-smokers in California than among other ethnic groups. Furthermore, the 1996 California Tobacco Survey data suggest that susceptibility to smoking among teenagers is highest in Latinos compared to other ethnic groups. It is widely recognized that improving health promotion of special populations requires community-based interventions in the target community. The proposed Por La Vida project will capitalize on the use of existing social networks in the Latino community. Previous Por La Vida programs have involved more than 100 community health advisors (i.e., consejeras) and more than 4,000 Latinas have been regular participants of educational programs emphasizing health promotion including the risks of tobacco use on smokers as well as non-smokers. In the past, Por La Vida projects have successfully reached out to the Latino population of low socioeconomic level and low level of acculturation. This proposal builds on the success of previous Por La Vida programs and aims at further enhancing the empowerment of the Latino community to build for themselves smokefree environments. The goal of this project is to develop a Por La Vida community-based intervention to encourage Latinos to take action to foster tobacco free environments in their own communities. The proposed project constitutes a pilot project that examines the feasibility of the proposed community-intervention in the predominately low income Latino community in Southeast San Diego. Specifically, this project proposes: (1) To design an intervention building on the Por La Vida model to enhance knowledge, attitudes and behaviors relevant to taking action for tobacco free communities; (2) To develop evaluation strategies to examine the process and impact of the intervention in the communities target of the intervention; and (3) To develop a competitive proposal to implement and evaluate the proposed community-based intervention in a subsequent TRDRP funding cycle. A team of professionals with strong credentials in tobacco research, community-based interventions, and/or community service will work together to accomplish these goals. The majority of the project personnel is bilingual and bicultural and has been involved in the past in community-based research projects. Four Consejeras from previous Por La Vida projects have also been recruited to collaborate in this project. Activities proposed to accomplish the goals include (1) the conduction of planning meetings with community and academic personnel and (2) the preparation of documents outlining the key components of the proposed intervention and evaluation methologies. Members of the community at the center of the proposed intervention will also participate in focus group discussions and pilot testing of measurement instruments. |
Final Report |
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It is widely recognized that improving health promotion of special populations requires community-based interventions in the target community. The completed pilot CARA Por La Vida project capitalizes on the use of existing social networks in the Latino community. Previous Por La Vida projects have successfully reached out to the Latino population of low socioeconomic level and low level of acculturation through health education programs. The pilot CARA project has built on the success of previous Por La Vida programs to further enhance the empowerment of the Latino community to build for themselves smokefree environments.
The goal of this pilot CARA project was to develop a Por La Vida community-based intervention to encourage Latinos to take action to foster tobacco free environments in their own communities. The project successfully examined the feasibility of the proposed community-intervention in the predominately low income Latino community in Southeast San Diego. Specifically, this project proposed: (1) To design an intervention building on the Por La Vida model to enhance knowledge, attitudes and behaviors relevant to taking action for tobacco free communities; (2) To develop evaluation strategies to examine the process and impact of the intervention in the communities target of the intervention; and (3) To develop a competitive proposal to implement and evaluate the proposed community-based intervention in a subsequent TRDRP funding cycle. A team of professionals with strong credentials in tobacco research, community-based interventions, and/or community service worked together to accomplish these goals. Four Consejeras from previous Por La Vida projects also collaborated in this project. The activities that were proposed to accomplish the goals were all completed and included: (1) the conduction of planning meetings with community and academic personnel; (2) meetings of the consejera advisory team with the community and academic principal investigators; (3) focus groups discussions; and (4) the preparation of documents outlining the key components of the proposed intervention and evaluation methodologies. Further, members of the community at the center of the intervention also participated in the pilot testing of measurement instruments. A competitive full CARA proposal was submitted and funded by the TRDRP and is currently ongoing. |
