title: The Latino community of Carrboro, Orange County, NC : an action-oriented community diagnosis : a participatory assessment of the Latino community of Carrboro
Creators: name: Childs, Erica
name: Etienne, Stephanie
name: Gross, Shaina
name: Stoimenoff, Kristen
name: Yamanis, Nina
Publisher: name: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill University Libraries
Year: 2003

description: Carrboro is located adjacent to Chapel Hill, North Carolina and prides itself on being an open and welcoming community. Since 1990 the Latino population of Carrboro has grown 936%, and currently represents 12% of the community. The significant growth of the Latino community of Carrboro has contributed to the town’s diversity and has led to many changes in service delivery. An Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis of the Latino community of Carrboro was conducted by five graduate students from the Department of Health Behavior and Health Education, within the School of Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. This community diagnosis was conceptualized as part of a larger, county wide assessment being done by the Orange County Health Department for Healthy Carolinians. The purpose of an Action-Oriented Community Diagnosis (AOCD) is to involve community members in identifying their own community’s needs and challenges, as well as its strengths and resources. The information collected through this process can assist the community in conceptualizing methods for dealing with the challenges identified and taking action to confront them. This AOCD process was implemented in three phases. Phase one included the collection of secondary data describing the overall quality of life of Latino residents in Carrboro in terms of physical and mental health, social functioning, economics and growth, crime and safety, housing, recreation, religion, and education. During the second phase, the team conducted interviews and focus groups with community members and service providers to gain firsthand insight into the community and capture the perspective of those who lived and worked there. Between January and April 2003, the students spoke with a total of 47 community members and service providers. In the third phase, the students planned and executed a community forum around the issues related to the major themes that came out of these discussions. The students systematically analyzed all primary data from these interviews. A total of four major themes and four secondary themes emerged from the data. The four major themes – so categorized because of the frequency with which interviewees discussed them – were health, education, employment, and transportation. Secondary themes included community relations, housing, recreation, and youth. Language barriers and documentation issues came up in almost every interview, and were considered overarching themes that affected every facet of life for Carrboro’s Latino population. A committee was formed to help plan the community forum where the interview results would be presented and discussed. The committee was comprised of community members, and service providers within the Latino community of Carrboro. The planning committee assisted in deciding on an appropriate date and location for the event, advised the team on the most important issues to present during the forum, participated in generating publicity about the event, and worked with the team to plan for and facilitate small group discussions at the forum. Being community members and service providers themselves, the planning committee members were essential actors in the AOCD process. Planning committee members named the process ¡Acción Latina! (Latino Action), setting the stage for a results-oriented discussion at the community forum. The community forum took place on Saturday, May 3, 2003. The students presented findings from the four major themes to the assembled group and invited participants to take part in small-group discussions about the issue of their choice. Students and planning committee members facilitated these smaller discussions, with a view to moving participants from identifying common challenges to developing concrete action steps. Participants interested in health issues focused on lack of health insurance among Latinos, the high cost of health care, and the high risk for STDs among Carrboro’s Latinos. They chose to work on strengthening the reach and effectiveness of the highly valued Carrboro Community Health Center, to ensure that information about its affordable and Latino-friendly services are widely disseminated and well-understood. With respect to STD risk, participants decided that a short-term goal should be to provide more information and services through targeted outreach to Latinos and that a long-term goal should be to increase condom use. They developed many specific recommendations to reach these goals. The education group focused primarily on enhancing Latino parents’ opportunities to be involved in their childrens’ education and schools. Participants discussed major barriers to parental involvement such as language issues, not understanding the system, and work schedules. They recommended holding a parent/teacher conference in Spanish during the first week of school which would help bring the parents together with the school system so that the parents could learn what they can do to help their children. The issue of documentation dominated the small group discussion about employment. Specific suggestions included contacting government representatives to advocate for changes to current immigration policies, establishing a volunteer-run student law clinic at the UNC Law School, and holding a workshop or information session on documentation and workers’ rights. Finally, the transportation small group came up with a series of recommendations to improve access to services for Latinos. These suggestions included translating the existing bus schedule into Spanish and encouraging members of the Latino community to join the Transportation Advisory Board and the Extra Territorial Jurisdiction Board. After the individual small group discussions, forum participants reconvened and representatives from each group presented the group’s recommendations and action steps to and accepted responsibility for following up on some of those steps.