Immigrant women implementing participatory research in health promotion.

Abstract

Few studies on women's health include immigrant women as participants, and fewer are conducted by immigrant women themselves. In this article, the authors present a model that allowed their full participation as researchers and authors. They describe their experiences using participatory research methods with Hispanic women in multiple ways to reach out to isolated women, collect data about community needs, and provide health education. They explore the advantages and challenges of being trained for both researcher and health educator roles, describe opportunities to use this approach to assess service needs, and discuss the potential for personal empowerment. They also report on the time commitment that such a bilingual project requires. In the process of interviewing marginalized women, they realized how much health promotion and participatory research complement each other. The authors conclude that combining participatory research with health promotion activities has promise to contribute toward increased empowerment of immigrant communities.