A pilot walking program for Mexican-American women living in colonias at the border.

PURPOSE: To test the effectiveness of ¡Vamos a Caminar! (Let's Walk!), an intervention for Mexican-American women living in economically disadvantaged, poorly urbanized areas in the South Texas border region. DESIGN: This was a nonexperimental, one-group, pretest and posttest intervention with a duration of 12 weeks. SETTING: The intervention was conducted in Hidalgo County, Texas, 1 of the 10 poorest counties in the United States, located at the border with Mexico. Participants resided in areas known as colonias, which are unincorporated and impoverished settlements along the border where many people live in trailers or self-built houses and lack basic services. SUBJECTS: Spanish-speaking Mexican-American women (n  =  16) 18 years of age and older. INTERVENTION: The program was home-based, culturally sensitive, theoretically driven, and facilitated by community health workers. MEASURES: Changes in walking levels, depressive symptoms, and stress levels were assessed. ANALYSIS: Descriptive statistics and the Wilcoxon matched-pairs signed-ranks test were used. RESULTS: A majority of participants were unemployed, had low levels of education, were born in Mexico, and were obese. After exposure to the program, the participants reported a significant increase in walking (915.8 metabolic equivalent min/wk; p  =  .002) and lower depressive symptoms (p  =  .055) and stress level scores (p  =  .017). CONCLUSIONS: Culturally sensitive programs promoting walking in underserved, minority populations are promising in reducing physical activity disparities.

A qualitative case study examining intervention tailoring for minorities.

OBJECTIVES: To explore issues of intervention tailoring for ethnic minorities based on information and experiences shared by researchers affiliated with the Health Maintenance Consortium (HMC). METHODS: A qualitative case study methodology was used with the administration of a survey (n = 17 principal investigators) and follow-up telephone interviews. Descriptive and content analyses were conducted, and a synthesis of the findings was developed. RESULTS: A majority of the HMC projects used individual tailoring strategies regardless of the ethnic background of participants. Follow-up interview findings indicated that key considerations in the process of intervention tailoring for minorities included formative research; individually oriented adaptations; and intervention components that were congruent with participants' demographics, cultural norms, and social context. CONCLUSIONS: Future research should examine the extent to which culturally tailoring long-term maintenance interventions for ethnic minorities is efficacious and should be pursued as an effective methodology to reduce health disparities.