Latinos Unidos por la Salud: The Process of Developing an Immigrant Community Research Team

Abstract

The tremendous Latino growth combined with the challenges of living in a nontraditional migration area make Latinos, particularly those who are undocumented, a " difficult-to-reach " and understudied population in research. We describe the development and practice of an immigrant community research team created to investigate and improve research quality regarding health-related needs, beliefs, and behaviors of recent Latino immigrants living in Cincinnati, Ohio. Our community research team, Latinos Unidos por la Salud (LU-Salud), is composed of Latino immigrant community members and academic researchers working in a health research partnership. The community team members are considered " co-researchers " since LU-Salud was designed within a community-based participatory research framework where we engaged in shared decision making at each phase of the research process from design, data collection, and interpretation of findings to dissemination. The co-researcher approach promoted shared decision-making and community empowerment throughout the research process with our community members providing expertise about the " what " (Latino immigrant health-related beliefs and behaviors, questionnaire content, interpretation of data) and the " why " (to obtain perspectives from Latino immigrants who typically don't engage with academics) and our academic members bringing expertise about the " how " (research design and methods, grant funding).