title: Spanish-speaking community of Asheboro, Randolph County, North Carolina : an action oriented community diagnosis : findings and recommendations for future action
Creators: name: De Leeuw, Kelley
name: Fesperman, Carrie
name: Garrettson, Mariana
name: Griffith, Matthew
name: Hart, Heather
name: Krier, Ann
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2004

description: Asheboro, a small textile-manufacturing city in the southern Piedmont region of North Carolina, is considered a desirable place to live by most of its adult residents. However, the small city has been struggling to keep up with rapid population growth due in part to an influx of Latino immigrants. From 1990 to 2000 the Asheboro Latino population increased by well over 2,000%. This rapid growth has put a strain on social services in the region, as well as on the incoming residents who encounter difficulty accessing needed services. The authors of this document are six graduate students from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Public Health who were invited by Randolph Health Improvement Partnership (RHIP) to Asheboro, North Carolina to perform an Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD) on the Latino population residing in Asheboro. The AOCD was intended to help inform the RHIP’s assessment for the Healthy Carolinians project. This document presents the methodology, results and possible future steps that emerged from the AOCD. One aim of AOCD is to form a partnership between the community and the student practitioners doing the assessment. A goal of this AOCD was to gain an understanding of life in Asheboro, including both good aspects as well as challenges, in order to recommend steps for planned social change within Asheboro. However, the process has many limitations, and this document should not be considered a comprehensive evaluation of Latino residents in Asheboro. The AOCD of Latino residents in Asheboro consisted of five phases. In the first phase, secondary data was gathered from census data, newspapers, and previous assessment documents to gain a perspective on Asheboro demographics, housing, history and current events. The second phase involved getting personally familiar with Asheboro through frequent visits and volunteering in the community. In the third phase, interviews and focus groups were conducted with adult and youth Latino residents and service providers in Asheboro. The interviews were analyzed for common themes and ideas in the fourth phase, and a community forum, called “Reunión Hispana,” was planned and implemented in the fifth phase. In all, 68 people were interviewed, and many other people participated in planning, supporting, and implementing Reunión Hispana. The interviews brought up many topics that affect life in Asheboro for Latinos. Documentation and racism issues pervade nearly all aspects of life, including employment, housing, transportation, academics, and social services, to name a few. On the other hand, many positive aspects about life in Asheboro for Latinos also emerged. Among strengths mentioned were the people, the churches, the agencies, the businesses, and the personal interactions within Asheboro’s communities. Overall, Latinos regard Asheboro as a desirable place to live. Both Latinos and service providers provided insight into valuable social structures such as family and church that create a sense of community for Asheboro’s Latino residents. Like many families and recent immigrants in this country, Latinos in Asheboro are often linguistically isolated. The lack of English proficiency, given the paucity of Caucasian residents who speak Spanish, has a huge impact on the lives of both Latino community members and service providers. The language barrier between Spanish speaking and non-Spanish speaking residents of Asheboro worsens both social and service interactions. In addition, the issue of interpreters was commented on uniformly in that there are more than there used to be, but it is still not sufficient and there are those who abuse that need by overcharging for interpretation services. In addition to language barriers, Latino residents’ ability to navigate what, to many of them, is a new and complicated system of services was an often-expressed perspective. There is an informal communication network among Latino residents consisting of family members, co-workers, and friends, which is often used to communicate information about accessing services. When asked specifically about health care, the vast majority of Latinos responded that the cost of health care in Asheboro is too high for them and low cost options involve too much red tape. There is a need for health education opportunities and more widely available interpretation services in all medical settings. Specific health concerns are drug and alcohol use, motor vehicle occupant injuries, diabetes, and sexually transmitted infections including HIV/AIDS. Two closely linked themes concerning youth emerged during the AOCD process: Many people in Asheboro are concerned with the development of gangs and the drugs and violence that come with gangs, and many people in Asheboro think the Latino youth need more activities and opportunities. Several times the lack of activities for youth in Asheboro or youth boredom was cited as a reason for youth involvement in gangs. At Reunión Hispana many of these topics were addressed, and participants in the community forum came up with various action steps, including: Learning more about personal rights, attending ESL classes, forming a group of volunteer interpreters, and providing information about what services are offered and how to obtain them. Participants also were introduced to the Latino Coalition and learned about some services provided in Asheboro. Based upon views expressed at Reunión Hispana, interview data, and team observations, it is recommended that Latino and non-Latino residents and service providers work together to do the following: Increase outreach by the Latino Coalition, integrate Latino youth into activities, provide more support for youth sports, give educational health workshops in Spanish, improve ESL Programs, hire more bilingual staff and interpreters, and decrease cost of interpreter services. Far more recommendations are discussed in the following document, along with a much richer, though certainly not comprehensive, description of the information about life in Asheboro that was generously shared by Latino residents and service providers.