Education for health promotores in Honduras

Keywords

Community health nursing -- Honduras, Community health services -- Honduras, Health promotion -- Honduras

Abstract

The World Health Organization (WHO) in 1979 declared a global goal of, "Health for all by the year 2000." Lesser-developed countries, including Honduras, struggle to meet the most basic health needs of their people. Problems of meeting health care needs in Honduras include uneven distribution of health services, inadequate numbers of trained health care workers, and lack or awareness of those in need of healthcare. Natural disasters such as Hurricane Mitch, which struck Honduras in November of 1998, have exacerbated the problems.

The purpose of this educational project was to develop, implement, and evaluate an educational program taught by nurses to lay community health care workers in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. These lay health workers will be called 'Community Health Promotores' (CHP) The CHPs will voluntarily work with their neighbors to improve health promotion, increase self care abilities for minor health problems, monitor growth in children and identify serious health problems for referral to their nurse of physician supervisor. The CHP will assist to improve the self-care abilities of community members and finding those in need of health care.

An instructional manual includes information on nutrition, hand-washing, first aide, disease states (hypertension, diabetes, heart disease, diarrhea, problems common in pregnancy and childhood, mental health), and skills in measuring blood pressure, temperature, pulse and respiration. Teaching strategies used in this project and pre and post course evaluation are discussed. The initial class was offered in March 1999. Eleven students completed the course and are volunteering in their communities.

Notes

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Graduation Date

1999

Semester

Fall

Advisor

Holcomb, Lygia

Degree

Master of Science (M.S.)

College

College of Health and Public Affairs

Department

Nursing

Format

Print

Pages

224 p.

Language

English

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

Identifier

DP0022663

Subjects

Dissertations, Academic -- Health and Public Affairs; Health and Public Affairs -- Dissertations, Academic

Accessibility Status

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