Anna Bowie, HBHE Student

March 5, 2019

There is great excitement and anxiety in the preparation of entering into a community. As you exit the comfort of familiarity and open the door who entrance is brand new, whose lock you do not know the key, and only some knowledge what lies on the other side, there seems more questions than answers. In undergrad, I developed a passion for finding comfort in the unfamiliar through my role in Alternative Spring Break in college. Through working in organizations around the country, composed of different customs and beliefs, I had grown overly confident in entering communities beyond my own. However, in my group's work for this class with the Healthy Families project to address infant mortality, there are areas requiring further personal growth. When asked in the course to confront our impressions about the population we were entering, I gravitated toward a narrative of politics, immigration, and border tensions without any real insight into the culture of the community we were working with in Hidalgo County.

Through contact with the site we will be working with, I have begun to understand at greater length the target beneficiaries of the intervention we will be working on. The Healthy Families project is an initiative out of the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley whose mission is to increase infant survival rates in Hidalgo County. The program contains 3 interventional prongs in community education and outreach, provider education, and a clinical component. Our group's project is working with promotoras in the clinical programming assisting in conducting focus groups with women in different parts of the county. We look to assist in gaining useful information to help with recruiting patients and messaging resources to continue making women aware about their pre-conceptual care options.

Now looking back on my prior perceptions, I understand that the education and knowledge surrounding a culture cannot be left to assumptions. Despite years of education on this concept, there are still areas for me to continue to educate myself. The women we will be working with are the experts of their own community and working with the promotoras is crucial for any success in relationship building and long-term growth. Many policies around health services like Healthy Families in the area prevent conversations surrounding birth-control or safe sex to occur. Often these policies are made by those of privileged identities who do not seek to understand the health access barriers for women, especially of low-income. Although I do not come knowing the answers to the many of the questions asked by the community, our community partner, or myself, it is evident that partnership is the greatest asset in opening the door to working in a community outside of our own identities.