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Engaging Men as Promotores de Salud: Perceptions of Community Health Workers Among Latino Men in North Carolina

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Abstract

The promotor de salud, or community health worker (CHW) role, is highly feminized and little is known about how men view their participation in CHW programs. We conducted in-depth interviews with Latino men in North Carolina to explore this gap. We used systematic coding and display procedures informed by Grounded Theory to analyze the data. Men described their communities as lacking cohesion, making integration of Latino immigrants difficult. Most did not consider themselves leaders or feel they had leaders in their communities. Their perceptions of the feminized CHW role as well as the volunteer or low-paid nature of CHW work conflicted with men’s provider role. They also did not think they could perform the CHW role because they lacked education, skills, and broad networks. Efforts to increase male participation in CHW programs in new Latino immigrant destinations will need to understand and address these gender and migration-related dynamics in order to engage both women and men in improving the health of their communities.

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Acknowledgments

We want to thank the financial support from the Latino Migration Project at UNC, the Community Engagement Fellowship by the Carolina Center for Public Service, and the Institute for Global Initiatives at UNC. Lastly, LVT wants to thank the doctoral training funding support from the Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACYT) from the Mexican Government. We also want to thank several people that participated during the whole process of the research. First and most to all the men that participated in the interviews. The promotoras that helped us with the conceptualization of the project and the recruitment of participants. Chelly Richards, MPH, who participated during the whole research process and conducted one of the interviews. El Pueblo, Inc. and Florence Siman, Health Programs Director of that institution, for their support for this project.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Health Behavior, UNC Gillings School of Global Public Health, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, 135 Dauer Drive, 302 Rosenau Hall, CB #7440, Chapel Hill, NC, 27599-7440, USA

    Laura Villa-Torres, Paul J. Fleming & Clare Barrington

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  1. Laura Villa-Torres
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  2. Paul J. Fleming
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  3. Clare Barrington
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Correspondence to Laura Villa-Torres.

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Villa-Torres, L., Fleming, P.J. & Barrington, C. Engaging Men as Promotores de Salud: Perceptions of Community Health Workers Among Latino Men in North Carolina. J Community Health 40, 167–174 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10900-014-9915-x

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