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COMMUNITY’S SELF-IDENTITY INFLUENCES COMMUNICATION
AND OUTREACH
Having grown
up in East Los Angeles and being only the second child in her
extended family to go to college, long-time community health
advocate Sandy Bonilla always considered herself a “ Chicana*
from the barrio.” A former youth violence and drug prevention
consultant to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
in Washington, DC, who spent years doing outreach in Latino
communities, Bonilla returned to California to work at Casa
de San Bernardino, Inc., a nonprofit, county-funded health
center in a low-income neighborhood. About 60% of the Latino
population in the community is second- and third-generation
Mexican and call themselves Chicano,* a term that has social
and national significance for Mexican Americans, particularly
in the West and Southwestern United States.
Bonilla felt
her childhood experiences and years spent working with Latino
non-profit
community groups easily prepared her for grassroots work
with youth at high risk in this neighborhood. She quickly realized,
however, that, unlike her work in Washington, DC, communities,
she had to be careful not to use the terms Latinos and Hispanics
interchangeably in this particular neighborhood, as Chicanos
perceived Latino as someone from Latin America and Hispanic
as someone with Spanish blood. Her colleagues also told her
not to use the term Mexican American, because Chicanos associated
Mexican with the growing number of Mexican immigrants in
the
community with whom they say they compete for low-wage jobs.
Terminology used to self-identify was also important for
other individuals of color in the community. Bonilla says, “You
don’t say African American here. It has an academic connotation.
You say Black.” Understanding and using the terms that
the community uses to identify itself was an important factor
in taking the first steps to communicate successfully with
teens and other project participants in the community.
COMMUNITY
MEMBERS HELP DIRECT HEALTH INTERVENTIONS IN DIVERSE
COMMUNITY
Ray
Michael Bridgewater, executive director of the Assemblies
of Petworth in Washington, DC, looks to community members
to lead the charge for partnerships that constitute the
work of this community empowerment organization. The
Assemblies’ projects take place in the most ethnically
diverse wards in the city, and they require an understanding
and knowledge of the cultures of Caribbean and West Indian,
Latino, African immigrant, African American, and growing
Eastern European communities. “ My board of directors
very much resembles the community,” Bridgewater
notes. Two such projects are a telemedicine health program
for Latino immigrants that involves partnerships with
local libraries and a “ Mama and Baby Bus,” which
provides screening and checkups. The Mama and Baby Bus
program involves partnerships with the local March of
Dimes; Mary’s Center for Maternal and Child Care,
Inc.; and Capital Community Health Plan. Family outreach
workers serve as cultural brokers and help spread the
word among the community about the dates and times the
bus will arrive. |
*Chicano/a:
This term has a myriad meanings for Mexican Americans
in the Southwestern United States. For some, it is a
political identity for social empowerment that arose
from the farm workers’ effort to unionize under
activist César Chavez. For others, it is a distinction
that symbolizes pride in their Mexican Indian ancestry.
 Cultural
brokering is community driven.
A major
principle of cultural competence and community engagement
is the recognition that communities determine their own
needs. Health care settings that have structures and
personnel to gauge the strengths, perceived needs, and
preferences of diverse communities are well positioned
to integrate a cultural brokering program. This process,
commonly referred to as asset mapping, assists the health
care setting in identifing community members who have
a natural instinct for listening to, leading, and organizing
their peers and who can function more effectively as
cultural brokers at multiple levels. |
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