An Innovative United States-Mexico Community Outreach Initiative for Hispanic and Latino People in the United States: A Collaborative Public Health Network

The Use of a SWOT Analysis to Evaluate a COVID-19 Mitigation Project in the Paso del Norte Region

A SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats) analysis is a strategic planning and management technique used for project planning. It is sometimes called situational assessment or situational analysis. We applied this tool (with some adaptations) effectively in a health promotion/public health education intervention project in the Paso del Norte region. This region is composed of a predominantly Hispanic population and is marked by a dynamic flow of residents across the border. In this milieu, COVID-19 has disproportionately impacted communities of color and individuals who are economically and socially marginalized. The University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP) has partnered with the National COVID-19 Resilience Network (NCRN) to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 among farm and food production workers (i.e., farmworkers, dairy, and meat packing workers) in El Paso, Doña Ana, and Moore counties. Intervention strategies include: (1) providing culturally and linguistically appropriate COVID-19 information, (2) disseminating protective equipment, and (3) ensuring access to COVID-19 vaccines. After completing year 1 of the project, we conducted a multiple-level SWOT analysis to evaluate, gather insights, and develop actionable strategies that would allow better service delivery to our priority population. We provide this case study to illustrate how a SWOT analysis can be a useful tool for practitioners engaged in the practice of evaluating health promotion and disease prevention programs. Even when attention and energy is absorbed in the immediate course of action, a SWOT analysis can help to achieve positive and effective collaborations resulting in strong service levels.

Mixed messages and COVID-19 prevention: Why information isn't always enough to protect meat processing workers

Introduction

The objective of this project was to investigate U.S. meat and poultry processing workers' knowledge of COVID-19, perceived ability to protect themselves from infection, and perspectives on COVID-19 vaccines to inform COVID-19 prevention efforts within this linguistically, racially, and ethnically diverse workforce.

Methods

Qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with Mexican, Central American, Congolese refugee, and Black or African American meat/poultry processing workers from Mississippi, Minnesota, Virginia, and Kentucky (N=40). Data were collected from December 5, 2020, to January 28, 2021. Interview audio was transcribed, and rapid qualitative data analysis was used to analyze transcripts.

Results

Most participants expressed receiving mixed messages about COVID-19 protection measures: they were told how to protect themselves (n=38), but workplace policies (such as lack of paid sick leave) often undermined their efforts. Participants who were asked about COVID-19 vaccines (n=31) were aware there were one or more vaccines available to protect them from COVID-19; one-third were eager to get vaccinated.

Conclusions

Community-based efforts may consider supplementing large scale unified information campaigns in order to prevent mixed messages, address worker needs to accurately gauge the threat of illness to their families and communities and empower them to prevent infection.

Post-COVID19 strategies to support the health care interactions of U.S. Mexican immigrants and return migrants with the Mexican health system

Background

Mexican migrants in the United States (U.S.) are twice more likely to underutilize health care and to experience low quality of care compared to the U.S.-born population. Current and former Mexican migrants in the U.S have used health services in Mexico due to lower cost, perceived quality, cultural familiarity, and the geographic proximity of the two countries.

Objective

This study aims to characterize the different health care interactions of current and former U.S. Mexican migrants with public and private health care organizations of the Mexican health system and to identify strategies to improve health care interactions post-COVID19.

Methods

We use a typology of cross-border patient mobility to analyze the facilitators and barriers to improve the health care interactions of current and former U.S. Mexican migrants with the Mexican health system. Our policy analysis framework examines how an outcome can be achieved by various configurations or combinations of independent variables. The main outcome variable is the improvement of health care interactions of U.S. Mexican migrants and return migrants with different government agencies and public and private health care providers in the Mexican health system. The main explanatory variables are availability, affordability, familiarity, perceived quality of health care and type of health coverage.

Findings

As the Mexican health system emerges from the COVID19 pandemic, new strategies to integrate current and former U.S. Mexican migrants to the Mexican health system could be considered such as the expansion of telehealth services, a regulatory framework for health services used by transnational patients, making enrollment procedures more flexible for return migrants and guiding return migrants as they reintegrate to the Mexican health system.

Conclusions

The health care interactions of U.S. Mexican migrants with the Mexican health system are likely to increase in the upcoming decades due to population ageing. Regulatory improvements and programs that address the unique needs of U.S. Mexican migrants and return migrants could substantially improve their health care interactions with the Mexican health system.

Advancing Access to Healthcare through Telehealth: A Brownsville Community Assessment

(1) Background: This paper focuses on the development of a community assessment for telehealth using an interprofessional lens, which sits at the intersection of public health and urban planning using multistakeholder input. The paper analyzes the process of designing and implementing a telemedicine plan for the City of Brownsville and its surrounding metros. (2) Methods: We employed an interprofessional approach to CBPR which assumed all stakeholders as equal partners alongside the researchers to uncover the most relevant and useful knowledge to inform the development of telehealth community assessment. (3) Results: Key findings include that: physicians do not have the technology, financial means, or staff to provide a comprehensive system for telemedicine; and due to language and literacy barriers, many patients are not able to use a web-based system of telemedicine. We also found that all stakeholders believe that telehealth is a convenient tool that has the capacity to increase patient access and care. (4) Conclusions: Ultimately, the use of an interprofessional community-based participatory research (CBPR) design allowed our team to bring together local knowledge with that of trained experts to advance the research efforts.

The impact of COVID-19 and access to health services in the Hispanic/Mexican population living in the United States

Introduction

The United States is home to 10.5 million undocumented immigrants, of which 5 out of 10 are Mexican or Central American. Their immigration status is an obstacle to secure employment that provides labor benefits such as sick leave and health insurance. Living through the global pandemic in the U.S. had a negative impact on this vulnerable population's mental and physical health. They avoided seeking primary or hospital care fearful that they were undocumented and uninsured. The services provided by the Ventanillas de Salud (VDS) "Health Windows" mitigated this pandemic's negative impact and have become an important source to support and increase access to health services among the immigrant community.

Methods

De-identified data from a database system called the Continuous Information System and Health Reports of Mexicans in the United States (SICRESAL-MX) to perform this secondary analysis. The descriptive analysis describes socio-demographic, epidemiological, and situational characteristics of COVID-19.

Results

Between January 2020 and July 2021, the VDS and UMS provided 11.5 million individual services to just over 4.3 million people. The main health conditions are overweight and obesity, high blood pressure and elevated cholesterol and glucose levels. Between March 2020 to July 2021 a total of 2,481,834 specific services related to COVID-19 were offered.

Discussion

The Mexican migrant community in the United States is in a vulnerable situation, largely due to its immigration status which limits their access to health and human services, including primary health care services. Many of them have suffered from chronic diseases since before the pandemic, generating difficulties in monitoring the ailments and exacerbating their conditions.

Reaching "hard to reach" workers: Evaluating approaches to disseminate worker safety information via the Mexican consular network

Mexican immigrants suffer a disproportionately large number of work-related injuries and deaths given their share of the workforce. Barriers of language, culture, and mistrust are often cited as factors that complicate efforts to reach these workers with occupational safety and health (OSH) interventions. By partnering with the Mexican government and its consulate network in the United States, researchers from the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health were able to assess the impact of four different information dissemination approaches (posters, passively distributed brochures, actively distributed brochures, and video kiosks) in Spanish in a five-phase study. Exit interviews conducted with Mexicans seeking consular services indicated that while nearly all respondents considered OSH to be of importance, significant differences in impact measures, such as noticing the materials and liking of content, were found when comparing the different approaches. Despite these differences, even the least effective approaches were noticed by large numbers of individuals and significantly increased their stated behavioral intentions regarding OSH. Considering all materials together, significantly more participants reported liking the materials (p < 0.001) than did not, learning something new (p < 0.01), trusting the information (p < 0.05), intending to seek out additional OSH information (p < 0.01), and intending to speak to their bosses about OSH (p < 0.05). These findings contribute to building an evidence base for moving research knowledge into practice, which is an essential, but often overlooked, element of occupational safety and health research, particularly among workers from underserved communities.