Adela Barajas tries to fend off second-hand smoke of Melchor Gamez during NCS skit.
Adela Barajas tries to fend off second-hand smoke of Melchor Gamez during NCS skit.
Nuestra Comunidad Sana is currently in the third year of a project funded by the Oregon Health Division to bring awareness of the dangerous effects of second-hand tobacco smoke to Hispanic communities in all parts of Oregon. This is done by training organizations which already serve the Hispanic community in the issues surrounding tobacco use and how best to approach their clients to prevent or modify tobacco use.
Background
The United States, long priding itself as a nation of immigrants, is well on the way to becoming an Hispanic nation. The 2000 Census puts the Hispanic population at more than 35 million, up almost 60% from the 22 million of a decade earlier.
In Oregon, although the official 2000 census put Hispanics at only 8% of the population, between 1990 and 2000, the population of Hispanics in 21 counties more than doubled; in six counties it tripled. There are now 19 counties with more than 2500 Hispanics: : Malheur, Umatilla, Klamath, Jackson, Lane, Polk, Marion, Yamhill, Clackamas, Washington, Multnomah, Deschutes, Douglas, Morrow, Linn, Jefferson, Josephine, Benton, and Hood River. Multnomah and Washington counties each have over 50,000 Hispanics. Persons of Mexican descent make up over 75% of the Hispanics in Oregon.
Figures on smoking are more difficult to discover. The Oregon Health Division reports 19% of all Oregon Hispanics currently smoke. There is a significant difference in gender. Approximately 24% of males and 19% of females over 18 currently smoke. Among Hispanic teens in Oregon, approximately 23% of both males and females smoke, essentially no different than their Anglo counterparts for males, and somewhat higher than Angla females. What is of greatest concern is the growing use of tobacco by teen-age Latinas. From 1995 to 1999, the number of Latinas who admit to smoking within the past 30 days climbed one percent each year, from 18.3% to 23.5%. The percent of teen-age girls smoking now exceeds that of the boys. In 1999, the percentage of middle school-aged Latinas who smoke reached almost 12%.
What is striking about these figures are issues about which there appear to be no data available, but which any organization, such as Nuestra Comunidad Sana, that works with Hispanic migrant or seasonal workers well knows qualitatively. When Hispanics/Latinos immigrate to the United States, a high percentage of men smoke, but almost no other family members (wives and children) do. After a few years of acculturation, some women and many children begin smoking. Insofar as Hispanic Oregon is a state of recent immigrants from Latin America (which on the whole it is), the statistics in the paragraph above suggest that only a few years after arriving in the state, the wives and children of Latino immigrants have largely abandoned the cultural taboos around smoking they came here with, and have taken up a deadly habit. The problem that presents itself is, therefore, how to convey enough accurate information in a timely, culturally appropriate, and effective manner so that families can lessen the impact of second-hand smoke, so that women and children do not initiate smoking, and so that men are encouraged to cease smoking.
Project design
We have designed and implemented a culturally and linguistically appropriate project to increase the capacity of local organizations serving the Hispanic community to address the issues of (1) education for the family as to the effects of second-hand smoke in hopes of reducing exposure to it, (2) education towards prevention of initiation by women and children, (3) education to encourage cessation by current smokers, and (4) collection of qualitative data that may help us and others to design future projects.
We are doing this in the Oregon counties with the highest concentrations of Hispanics/Latinos, by developing a series of partnerships with organizations which already serve the local Hispanic community and who are well familiar with the needs and particularities of that community. In this manner, we maximize the fiscal impact of the project, by training trainers who will spread the word further and more effectively than we could hope to do within the available budget. Our trainings are free of cost to the trainees, upon their commitment to use the information provided with their own clients, providing education to encourage the attainment of the goals listed above. Trainings are held at sites most convenient to the trainees.
The organizations trained in our methodology (popular education) and in the content of tobacco prevention and education use their natural access points in the local Hispanic communities, such as parents' and youth groups for Migrant Head Start, field clinics and direct patient services for Community Health Centers, workplaces for community advocacy groups, church groups for churches, etc., to convey the messages of prevention and cessation. As these groups are already well attuned to the communities they serve, they are able to utilize members of the target community to adapt our training to their particular circumstances for the highest degree of effectiveness.
The Center for Social Gerontology. Click first on "Tobacco and Elderly," then click on "Tobacco and Minorities."
The Center for Disease Control and Tobacco and Minorities.
Latino Council on Alcohol and Tobacco
Tobacco Industry Internal Documents.