Community collaboration, advocacy and culturally responsive research are hallmarks of work carried out at the Latino Center for Health, according to Associate Professor Gino Aisenberg, the center’s co-director. The Latino Center for Health is based at the School of Social Work and operates in partnership with the UW School of Medicine.
Engaging the community in a respectful and authentic way is at the very core of the center’s mission to address health disparities and promote well-being across the diverse Latinx population, says Aisenberg. Nearly all of the research currently being conducted stems from requests originated by community leaders and organizations.
For example, community leaders and state organizations requested the center’s help in understanding the issues around Latino workers in Central Washington accessing the state’s workers compensation system. And when the Yakima Valley Farm Workers Clinic sought to expand access to quality depression care for patients, the solution involved training bilingual and bicultural social work students at Heritage University to deliver evidence-based and culturally tailored treatment by phone.
Another project, supported by the UW Population Health Initiative, wanted to identify the health and safety concerns facing farmworkers in Skagit and Whatcom counties. A group called Community to Community Development, a woman-led grassroots organization in Bellingham, Wash., created a survey to look at such issues as pesticide use in the fields, availability of safety gear, heat-related illness, work-related injuries, worker rights and social justice.
Creating the survey was one thing, but administering it gave the C2C team pause. Significant linguistic barriers had to be overcome as well as geographic ones, given the migratory nature of farm work.
“People think that migrant workers are the same regardless of where they live,” says Aisenberg, “but workers in Skagit and Whatcom counties are different from those who live in the Yakima Valley. They are more migratory, and many come from areas of Mexico or Central America where they speak the indigenous languages. Spanish is not their first language.”
To reach farmworkers, C2C trained 12 promotoras who administered the survey to 349 individuals in English, Spanish and several indigenous languages. Their findings, presented at a community forum attended by farmworkers and community leaders, identified the top environmental concerns as pesticide use, pests including rodents, and water quality.
What sets the Latino Center for Health apart is this high level of expertise and community engagement. Today, its research findings are used to inform new policies and programs created by the state legislature and designed to foster greater health equity among the marginalized and underserved Latinx community.
“We are not driving policy,” explains Aisenberg. “The need is driving the policy. What we are doing is listening to the community, facilitating collaborative partnerships, providing our research expertise, and supporting capacity building for research in the community. If we can continue to create impactful research and articulate its value to the state legislature, we can continue to address the health needs of this community and move closer toward achieving health equity.”
The center’s very existence is rooted in community activism. In 2014, Latino community advocates, led by former state representative Phyllis Gutierrez-Kenney, visited their elected officials to let them know that the needs of Latinos in their districts were not being met. The person-to-person approach paid off and legislation to fund the Latino Center for Health was passed in 2015. The initial biennium budget of $500,000 was repeated two years later with another $500,000 appropriation. Last year, data presented by center researchers were so compelling that the state legislature doubled the appropriation to $1 million.
Community input also played a role in identifying the shortage of bilingual/bicultural health service providers in Washington state. Since Latinos are the largest and among the fastest-growing racial/ethnic group in the state, this barrier to equitable health care was huge.
Once aware of the issue, state legislators approved $150,000 to support a Latino physician supply study to identify the number of Latino doctors statewide, their areas of specialty and geographic locations as well as their age, gender and ability to speak Spanish. The data will help inform the center’s policy recommendations on ways to address this shortage.
The recommendations will be refined at an October 8 symposium organized by center staff and including key elected officials, influential community stakeholders and university leaders from around the state. Findings and policy recommendations that result will be submitted to representatives so that legislation to combat this shortage can be addressed.
Through these kinds of innovative and culturally responsive research approaches, coupled with a reliance on strong community partnerships, Aisenberg and the Latino Center for Health have become a critical statewide resource in addressing health equity issues and promoting social justice.