Empowering Community Health Workers to Provide Health Information to Hispanic Community Members

Background: Librarians from the Tompkins-McCaw Library for the Health Sciences and Health and Wellness Library collaborated with staff from La Casa de la Salud, a non-profit organization to create and conduct a consumer health information training program that will contribute to the reduction in health disparities of Hispanic people in the community.

Description: Two health sciences librarians and staff from La Casa de la Salud developed and implemented a program to provide health information resources in the Spanish language to Hispanic community members. The librarians designed a one hour training session for community health workers. The training detailed how to find reliable consumer health information resources applicable to the Hispanic community in the Spanish language and the librarians demonstrated reliable websites and videos. Identified Spanish language consumer health resources were added to the non-profit organization's website and community health workers were then able to train community members on how they can find information to meet their health information needs. Training workshops were designed and provided in English with support from a Spanish speaking translator.

Results Two workshops were conducted for La Casa de la Salud community health workers. The first workshop was conducted at the Health and Wellness Library and twelve people attended. The second workshop was held at Vida Nueva church and sixteen people attended. Feedback from written evaluations was very positive about the programs and most reported they learned about new resources and planned to start using at least one resource they learned about.

Conclusion: This collaboration allowed the Health and Wellness Library the opportunity to provide awareness of its services and resources to the local Hispanic community.