Transforming Community Members Into Diabetes Cultural Health Brokers

Abstract

The training was successful in increasing trainee knowledge and confidence about diabetes prevention and self-management. Participants not only developed proficiency in discussing diabetes, they also made important lifestyle changes that demonstrated their commitment to the cause and the project. Low-cost initiatives like this are easily reproducible in other communities of color and could be modified to meet the needs of other communities as well.

“Living Well with Diabetes”: Evaluation of a Pilot Program to Promote Diabetes Prevention and Self-Management in a Medically Underserved Community

“…The methodology for recruitment and training of the cultural health brokers has been described elsewhere. 26 Health Talkers were compensated for their time and signed consent forms allowing for the analysis of their de-identified written conversation summaries.…”

“…Health Talkers participated in 20 hours of formal training during 1 week that addressed skills and methods in leadership and cultural health brokering, basic diabetes knowledge, and health literacy. 26 The curriculum was approved by Buffalo State College for continuing professional education credit. Instruction about diabetes knowledge was led by J.S.R., who has been trained as a master trainer in the Stanford Chronic Disease Self-Management Program and the Stanford Diabetes Self-Management Program.…”

“…Additionally, the Health Talkers established a resource library in their community that consisted of information about HCPs, diabetes self-management tips, recipe cards and cookbooks, and other relevant healthy-living information. 26 …”

“…The Health Talker program was an initiative in which African-American members of medically underserved communities received diabetes-specific cultural health broker training developed by the authors to work within their communities to improve access to health information and diabetes self-management skills. 26 The aim of this pilot was to examine the potential of a model to improve community members’ knowledge and access to diabetes information and promote activation of diabetes self-management skills. This article presents the results of a program evaluation assessing the content and community perception of Health Talker–led community conversations centered on diabetes knowledge, prevention, and self-management.…”

Current Approaches to Support the Psychosocial Care of African American Adults with Diabetes: A Brief Review

“…This culturally-relevant knowledge became the guiding framework for how investigators tailored their recruitment methods, the content of intervention materials, the methods of delivering educational content, and the tone of interaction between study participants and their “nurse-broker” (Alexander et al, 2008). Other pilot studies utilizing trained community members as “cultural health brokers” have also been effective in improving diabetes knowledge and self-management among African American adults with type 2 diabetes who reside in low-resource environments (Cadzow, Craig, Rowe, & Kahn, 2012). …”