Namaste Community Health Partnership, Denver, CO, USA.
University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus, Aurora, CO, USA.
Health Promot Pract. 2022 Sep;23(5):743-748. doi: 10.1177/15248399211019057. Epub 2021 May 27.
This practice note reports on the work of the Namaste Community Health Partnership, an academic-community partnership established to address health disparities in a metro-area Bhutanese-Nepali refugee community in the western United States. Partners worked together to develop, implement, and evaluate a culturally-tailored health promotion program where Bhutanese-Nepali individuals led weekly walking groups and shared health promotion information and behavior change tools with community participants. The program was implemented with approximately 70 community members across two metro-area neighborhoods and two adult day care centers serving elders. Evaluation strategies included documenting walk attendance, tracking engagement with health promotion goals, and focus group discussions with program participants. Once enrolled, most participants consistently attended walks and achieved weekly goals-some even increased walking frequency beyond program requirements. Participants provided positive feedback about having a community leader and reported learning new information and enjoying participating with other community members. Challenges and lessons learned included difficulties engaging younger adults from the community, concerns about signing research consent forms, cultural norms discouraging the distribution of individual research participation incentives, variability across groups in preferences for program activities, and barriers to administering survey-based evaluation instruments. This academic-community partnership built capacity in the local Bhutanese-Nepali community, produced culturally relevant health programming, and trained and employed community members as health educators and physical activity leaders. The program resulting from this work has the potential to improve health knowledge and chronic disease prevention practices and ultimately reduce health disparities in an underserved refugee community.
本实践报告介绍了 Namaste 社区健康伙伴关系的工作，该伙伴关系是为了解决美国西部一个大都市地区的不丹-尼泊尔难民社区的健康差异问题而建立的学术-社区伙伴关系。合作伙伴共同努力制定、实施和评估了一个文化适应性的健康促进计划，该计划由不丹-尼泊尔人领导每周的步行小组，并与社区参与者分享健康促进信息和行为改变工具。该计划在两个大都市社区和两个为老年人服务的成人日间护理中心约有 70 名社区成员参与。评估策略包括记录步行出勤率、跟踪与健康促进目标的参与情况以及对计划参与者进行焦点小组讨论。一旦注册，大多数参与者始终参加步行活动并实现了每周目标，有些人甚至超过了计划要求的步行频率。参与者对有社区领导表示赞赏，并报告说他们学习了新的信息，喜欢与其他社区成员一起参与。所面临的挑战和经验教训包括难以吸引社区中的年轻成年人、对签署研究同意书的担忧、文化规范阻碍分发个人研究参与激励措施、不同群体对计划活动偏好的差异以及管理基于调查的评估工具的障碍。这种学术-社区伙伴关系增强了当地不丹-尼泊尔社区的能力，制定了具有文化相关性的健康计划，并培训和雇用社区成员作为健康教育者和体育活动领导者。这项工作产生的计划有可能改善健康知识和慢性病预防实践，并最终减少服务不足的难民社区的健康差异。
