Healthy Immigrant Community
Although immigrants and refugees often arrive in the United States with better health than the general population, these advantages diminish over time, in part due to the adoption of unhealthy dietary behaviors. Population-based interventions have had limited success in preserving these early health advantages, highlighting the need for innovative approaches that are tailored to—and led by—immigrant communities themselves. In 2011, RHCP received funding for the Healthy Immigrant Families (HIF) project, in which community and academic partners co-developed a 12-lesson, home-based intervention focused on healthy eating and physical activity, delivered by bilingual interventionists. At 12 months, adults in the intervention group showed significant improvements in dietary quality compared with controls, although improvements were also observed in the control group.
These findings led to the development of the Healthy Immigrant Community (HIC) project, which builds on the HIF model by leveraging social networks to enhance reach, sustainability, and behavior change. The goal of HIC is to adapt the HIF intervention into a social network–based approach to improve dietary behaviors among overweight and obese immigrant adults in Rochester, Minnesota. In February 2020, RHCP launched a pilot study in which Hispanic and Somali adults were trained as Health Promoters through 12 face-to-face lessons taught by Mayo Clinic experts, after which the Health Promoters delivered the same content to social networks of five to ten individuals. Building on this pilot, RHCP enrolled 475 participants in a randomized clinical trial in June 2022, with Health Promoters receiving ongoing training from Health Coaches and leading face-to-face or virtual group sessions over 12 months, each focused on key aspects of healthy eating and physical activity. Preliminary results from the HIC trial indicate that participants have reduced cardiovascular risk and experienced weight loss. These early findings are currently being disseminated to the community through RHCP’s established outreach and engagement channels.
Publications
Funding
National Institutes of Health: National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (R01 HL 111407)
Mayo Clinic Center for Clinical and Translational Science: National Center for Advancing Translational Science UL1 TR000135
Mayo Clinic Office of Health Disparities Research
National Institutes of Health: National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities (P50 MD017342)