Field Placement: Community Health Partnership of Illinois
Location: Chicago, IL
Preceptor: Susan Bauer
Student Name: Nicole Potempa
Year: 2008
¡Si, Podemos! is a tool kit that was developed to tackle the issue of childhood obesity within the migrant farmworking community of Illinois. This project was prepared for the federally funded organization, Community Health Partnership of Illinois (CHPofIL). CHPofIL provides healthcare to Latino migrant and seasonal farmworkers in Illinois. The organization has five clinic locations in Aurora, Kankakee, Hoopeston, Mendota and Woodstock, Illinois. The completion of the project was overseen by Susan Bauer, the executive director of CHPofIL.
Migrant farmworkers face many challenges that make them vulnerable to health disparities. In particular, CHPofIL has noticed an increase in the number of obese migrant farmworker children in their summer migrant headstart programs. The 2004 project, Healthy Smiles Healthy Growth (HSHG), showed that 8 to 10 year old migrant farmworker children (n=439) who participated in HGSH were more likely to be overweight than children 8 to 10 years old in Illinois who also participated in the program.2 In addition, this data showed that 35% of the 6 to 9 year old farmworker children enrolled in the program were overweight in Illinois while 50% of migrant farmworker children 10 to 16 were overweight. 2
To help address issues of obesity within the farmworking community, CHPofIL was distributing general activity packets, TV Zombies and Soda Monsters, for children and teens about the dangers of poor nutrition and lack of physical activity. As an intern, over the summer of 2008, I was employed to further investigate the issue of childhood obesity within the farmworking community. The internship required not only collecting quantitative data to support the disparity of obesity within the migrant farmworker children, but also to engage in qualitative data analysis in order to pinpoint specific reasons for the disproportionate number of obese and overweight children. Both the quantitative and qualitative data were then used to create a guide or tool kit for the promotores, lay health workers, employed by CHPofIL.
All the quantitative data analysis and much of the qualitative data analysis was focused on the migrant farmworkers who lived in the Aurora region of Illinois. This clinic was chosen specifically because it was most convenient for my travel purposes. As all five clinics were spread throughout Illinois, it was not feasible for this summer project to include all five areas. As a result, the final tool kit was tailored for the individual needs of the Aurora farmworking community. However, the activities created to promote nutritional and physical activity awareness were designed to be adaptable to the unique situations of the migrant farmworkers in all areas of Illinois.
One quarter of the eleven week internship was dedicated to reviewing migrant farmworker charts to calculate obesity rates within the past three years, 2006- 2008. The other quarter of the internship was spent preparing and distributing key informant and participant interviews. The remaining half of the internship was dedicated to using the data gathered from the interviews to create a series of activities to teach and reinforce nutrition and physical activity within the migrant farmworking community. The tool kit was based off of a childhood obesity prevention program by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute called We Can! This curriculum was used as a model in part because partners of CHPofIL recommended the use of We Can! among the migrant farmworkers. These activities were then reviewed by the promotore coordinators of Aurora and Kankakee along with the promotores of Aurora.
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