Health promotion practice
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Health promotion practice · May 2016
Breast, Cervical, and Colorectal Cancer Education and Navigation: Results of a Community Health Worker Intervention.
Now that cancer has surpassed heart disease as the top cause of death for Hispanics in the United States, it is even more critical to focus on early detection of cancer in this population. We report the results of a theory-driven education-plus-navigation pilot intervention delivered by bilingual, bicultural community health workers (CHWs) with the goal of increasing cancer screening rates and knowledge among low-income Latinas. CHWs enrolled 691 eligible women, ages 18 to 75 years, considered rarely or never screened for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer. ⋯ CHWs provided education to 535 (77%) eligible women, and arranged mammograms, Pap tests, or stool blood tests for 174 (25%) participants, with another 94 (14%) placed on a waiting list at a local health center. Statistically significant positive changes on knowledge of screening guidelines for breast, cervical, and colorectal cancer, and beliefs/attitudes regarding early detection were observed from pre- to posttest among eligible women who attended an educational session. Results highlight the effectiveness of CHW-directed interventions in recruiting individuals for programs, educating them, and influencing cancer knowledge and screening behavior.
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Health promotion practice · May 2015
Reflexivity: a methodological tool in the knowledge translation process?
Knowledge translation is a dynamic and iterative process that includes the synthesis, dissemination, exchange, and application of knowledge. It is considered the bridge that closes the gap between research and practice. Yet it appears that in all areas of practice, a significant gap remains in translating research knowledge into practical application. ⋯ As a practical tool, reflexivity can go beyond simply looking at what practitioners are doing; when approached in a systematic manner, it has the potential to enable practitioners from a wide variety of backgrounds to identify, understand, and act in relation to the personal, professional, and political challenges they face in practice. This article focuses on how reflexive practice as a methodological tool can provide researchers and practitioners with new insights and increased self-awareness, as they are able to critically examine the nature of their work and acknowledge biases, which may affect the knowledge translation process. Through the use of structured journal entries, the nature of the relationship between reflexivity and knowledge translation was examined, specifically exploring if reflexivity can improve the knowledge translation process, leading to increased utilization and application of research findings into everyday practice.
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Health promotion practice · May 2015
The Michigan Healthy School Action Tools process generates improvements in school nutrition policies and practices, and student dietary intake.
The Michigan Healthy School Action Tools (HSAT) is an online self-assessment and action planning process for schools seeking to improve their health policies and practices. The School Nutrition Advances Kids study, a 2-year quasi-experimental intervention with low-income middle schools, evaluated whether completing the HSAT with a facilitator assistance and small grant funding resulted in (1) improvements in school nutrition practices and policies and (2) improvements in student dietary intake. A total of 65 low-income Michigan middle schools participated in the study. ⋯ Schools completing the HSAT were compared to schools that did not complete the HSAT with regard to number of policy and practice changes and student dietary intake. Schools that completed the HSAT made significantly more nutrition practice/education changes than schools that did not complete the HSAT, and students in those schools made dietary improvements in fruit, fiber, and cholesterol intake. The Michigan HSAT process is an effective strategy to initiate improvements in nutrition policies and practices within schools, and to improve student dietary intake.
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Health promotion practice · May 2015
Building research capacity with members of underserved American Indian/Alaskan Native communities: training in research ethics and the protection of human subjects.
To develop a research ethics training course for American Indian/Alaskan Native health clinic staff and community researchers who would be conducting human subjects research. ⋯ By using a collaborative process to engage community partners in research ethics discussions, rather than either an asynchronous online or a lecture/presentation format, resulted in significant mutual learning about research ethics and community concerns about research. This approach requires university researchers to invest time in learning about the communities in which they will be working prior to the training.
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Health promotion practice · May 2015
Vision impaired or professionally blind: health education research and firearm violence.
In the past three decades, approximately 1 million Americans have been killed with firearms and over 2 million have been injured with firearms. Firearm violence is one of the top 10 causes of premature mortality for racial/ethnic minorities and youths 1 to 19 years of age. ⋯ We provide several examples of areas of health education where firearm violence is congruent with the professional responsibilities of health educators. Finally, we encourage health educators to become involved in firearm violence research and health education-related journal leaders to become more proactive in soliciting manuscripts that address firearm violence-related issues.