Read about a successful technical assistance consultation facilitated by our Milwaukee-based Research Ambassadors and CCHE staff Sarah Esmond and Caitlin Scott.
In Spring 2021, CCHE affiliate and HELI 2018 alumna Maichou Lor, PhD, RN, reached out to CCHE for a technical assistance consult. Dr. Lor is an Assistant Professor in the UW School of Nursing.
Dr Lor. was mentoring undergraduate students on a Hilldale Undergraduate/Faculty Research Fellowship which allows students to undertake their own research project in collaboration with a UW-Madison employee. This student research project, an extension of a qualitative study that originally focused on the Hmong population, aimed to hear experiences of Latinx adults with hearing loss, their caregivers (with or without hearing loss), and the hearing services each rely on. Both students on the project are Latinx and neither are from Dane County. Dr. Lor contacted CCHE for assistance after the team had difficulty attracting eligible adults to the project. She shared:
We tried so many strategies such as posting a study advertisement on a national magazine, a
study flyer at local laundry mats, groceries stores, and meeting with student organizations to pass our flyers to targeted participants. Yet, nothing worked! We recognized that these initiatives do not build trust, a key component in research engagement. Through CCHE, we learned that culturally tailoring the flyer to the Latinx community and having community stakeholders facilitate the connections between us and local community organizations that served the Latinx community created trust and increased research participation.
Dr. Lor and CCHE staff identified strategies for liaising with Latinx communities in both Madison and Milwaukee. CCHE called on All of Us Wisconsin research coordinator, Ms. Lauren Schuster-Aquino, to review the Spanish language recruitment materials to make enhancements. CCHE also connected Dr. Lor with CCHE Research Ambassadors within the Community Health Research Office of the United Community Center in Milwaukee. Mr. Al Castro and Ms. Shary Perez provided additional guidance resulting in 12 Latinx adults participating!
My students and I are so grateful for the assistance and support from CCHE and their research ambassadors. Without their assistance, this project would not have been successful. This experience increased my students’ appreciation for community-based research and brought back the momentum for my students to complete this project. Both students shared that they feel empowered to do work in their community and are dedicated to doing health equity research. As a result of this project, they have submitted a research abstract to the Medical Organization for Latino Advancement Health Symposium.
See the final flyer used for recruitment here (PDF)
Congratulations to Dr. Lor and honors nursing students Ms. Raquel Burnham and Ms. Yesenia Gamero on this successful endeavor!
Related > >
- We’d also like to congratulate Dr. Lor on her recent Baldwin Wisconsin Idea award for another aspect of her research!
Dr. Lor’s project, ‘Partnering with the Hmong Community to Build Better Medical Translation Tools and Preserve Hmong Narratives to Reduce Health Disparities,’ was funded in the 2021 Baldwin grant cycle. This project will support key partnerships to build better medical translation tools and improve cultural understanding to reduce health disparities in the Hmong community. An important step toward addressing these health disparities is overcoming poor communication, language barriers, and a lack of cultural understanding during medical encounters between Hmong patients and healthcare providers. The project outcome will be a digital Hmong medical terminology resource available across and beyond Wisconsin, which will be disseminated for free to bilingual caregivers, medical professionals, interpreters, the Hmong community and the general public. Read more about all the 2021 Baldwin awards here. - Additional thanks to Dr. Lor for her role as a consultant on one of our AHEAD 2021 grants awarded to Dr. Tana Chongsuwat.