Field Testing: Community Health Promoter Curriculum

We Can Prevent Cervical Cancer: image from curriculum

We recently finished the first round of formal field-testing of our Community Health Promoter Curriculum in Nicaragua. After months of editing, re-editing, seeking feedback and preliminary testing, we are finally close to a great finished product. In the works: another field test in Peru in November and in Tanzania in February.

Clear, accurate info

An important part of the work that we do focuses on community sensitization and mobilization around cervical cancer prevention.  Health centers can be built, providers can be trained, but if the women and men in a community have no information—or worse—misinformation about cervical cancer prevention, then screening programs will fail. (See: Men’s Perceptions of Cervical Cancer.)

Working on the curriculum has given us an opportunity to standardize, as well as improve the quality of the work we do in the coffee communities.  We also plan to get further feedback on our field-tested version from both Jhpiego and PATH, important partners in this work.  We developed the curriculum with simple language and images in an effort to reach the many women with limited literacy in low resources settings.  Ultimately the hope is that it will be translated and adopted by many organizations around the world. There’s lots of interest in the international community for this sort of resource, and we are excited to be a driving force in rolling it out globally.

Community Health Promoters in training