Using Promotores Programs to Improve Latino Health Outcomes: Implementation Challenges for Community-Based Nonprofit Organizations

ABSTRACT

Promotores are community lay health workers who provide outreach and services to Latinos. Little research on the promotores programs exists, and the focus of this article is to identify the challenges faced by community-based nonprofits when implementing promotores programs. To explore this type of program, telephone interviews were conducted with 10 promotores academic experts and nonprofit executives. The results suggest that implementation challenges fall into three major categories: the lack of standardized information on promotores programs, labor issues, and organizational costs. Future recommendations made in the article highlight promotores recruitment and retention strategies and the development of a clearinghouse of programmatic implementation information for community-based nonprofits.     

A Stochastic Volatility Model With Markov Switching

This article presents a new way of modeling time-varying volatility. We generalize the usual stochastic volatility models to encompass regime-switching properties. The unobserved state variables are governed by a first-order Markov process. Bayesian estimators are constructed by Gibbs sampling. High-, medium- and low-volatility states are identified for the Standard and Poor's 500 weekly return data. Persistence in volatility is explained by the persistence in the low- and the medium-volatility states. The high-volatility regime is able to capture the 1987 crash and overlap considerably with four U.S. economic recession periods.     

A preliminary evaluation of the effects of a science education curriculum on changes in knowledge of drugs in youth

Drug and alcohol use among youth remains at pervasively high levels, but students are receiving less school-based prevention. Infusing health information into core curricula may be a valuable prevention approach. Therefore, behavior change theory was used to develop a science education curriculum on drugs for fourth- and fifth-grade students, which was then evaluated using a pretest/posttest quasi-experimental design. Exposure to the curriculum was associated with a change in knowledge; other characteristics like grade level also played a role. More positive attitudes toward science at pretest predicted greater knowledge change, and students who knew less at the start showed a greater change in knowledge. Results of this evaluation may support the efficacy of the curriculum and the utility of combining behavior change theory with educational approaches.