Enabling and sustaining the activities of lay health influencers: lessons from a community-based tobacco cessation intervention study.
The authors present findings from a community-based tobacco cessation project that trained lay health influencers to conduct brief interventions. They outline four major lessons regarding sustainability. First, participants were concerned about the impact that promoting cessation might have on social relationships. "Social risk" must be addressed during training to ensure long-term sustainability. Second, formal training provided participants with an increased sense of self-efficacy, allowed them to embrace a health influencer identity, and aided in further reducing social risk. Third, material resources functioned to mediate social tensions during health intervention conversations. A variety of resources should be made available to health influencers to accommodate type of relationship, timing, and location of the interaction. Finally, project design must be attentive to the creation of a "community of practice" among health influencers as an integral part of project sustainability. These lessons have broad implications for successful health promotion beyond tobacco cessation.
University of South Florida, Tampa, Florida, USA.
Heide
H
Castañeda
Mark
M
Nichter
Mimi
M
Nichter
Myra
M
Muramoto
D000328:Adult; D003150:Community Health Workers; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010349:Patient Compliance; D010353:Patient Education as Topic / Q000379:methods; D011369:Professional-Patient Relations; D016540:Smoking Cessation / Q000379:methods*