ObjectivesImportant
Points
· Define “Lay Health Advisors” (LHA)
· Define “community” and discuss its importance
· Identify LHAs’ responsibilities, and their general roles in the community in health promotion.
· Explain the important role that LHAs play in promoting annual breast cancer screening
· Lay Health Advisors can significantly improve access to health services
· Lay Health Advisors provide vitally important support to their community including social, emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal support
“Lay Health Advisors” are the people in a community that others tend to turn to for “advice, information, and support” as between patients and health care providers.29 Although the value of their service is often not recognized, the concept of “Lay Health Advisors” is nothing new. For centuries, there has always been a level of lay involvement in health and medical care. The word “lay” means “not professionally trained in medicine.” The involvement of Lay Health Advisors has proven to be an important bridge between health care professionals and patients, between the formal medical care and the individuals’ informal health needs. Due to the LHA’s role in the community, they tend to be viewed as sympathetic when community members look for empathy and assurance as far as health is concerned. Trained LHAs can in turn convey up-to-date health knowledge in lay terms that are easily understood and acceptable. In the long run, LHAs can help increase accessibility of health care, increase healthy habits, and possibly lead to changes in health care delivery.
Characteristics of Lay Health Advisors30
Lay Health Advisors generally possess all or many of the following characteristics:
· Influential members of social networks who can link and negotiate health care services for people in their community
· Knowledge of community resources
· Credibility within their own communities
· Ability to reach isolated or high risk persons
· Interest in working with a wide range of health issues
· Basic knowledge of a broad range of health issues
· Desire to keep up to date on developments in personal health
· Personal warmth and natural leadership skills
· Capable of integrating their LHA roles into their other daily and family responsibilities
· Ability to serve as a positive role model for family and friends
· Ability to bridge cultural gaps between patients and health providers
· Committed to helping others
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Ability to express empathy for others in disseminating health information
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From these terms, one can easily conclude that Lay Health Advisors are closely connected to the community where they belong. Here, community refers to a group of people with certain connections, such as in an association, a club, a neighborhood, or church organization. The social connectedness in a community has important consequences in health and well-being.31 Lay Health Advisors play a significant role in the social connectedness and the well-being of a community.
1. What can Lay Health Advisors offer?
Lay Health Advisors are a source of help that is internal and informal in their community. LHAs are usually the “first contact persons,” while health professionals are the “second contacts.”32 Lay support systems that are formed by Lay Health Advisors are, in a way, “hidden health care systems” or informal help systems that supplement or complement, but do not replace, the professional health care systems, or formal help systems, through free communication and collaboration to ensure more comprehensive and long-lasting support for people in the community.
2. LHAs’ important role in the Michigan Asian community
The LHAs’ role in the Michigan Asian community is especially crucial for the well-being of its members who may be challenged by linguistic and cultural barriers, especially among the older or new immigrant populations.
One important role that lay health advisors play is in the promotion of regular cancer screening. By tapping into the preexisting supportive ties formed in the church, work place, business, or neighborhood, lay health advisors can provide support and counseling, and be educators-organizers in the promotion of annual mammography screening for women 40 years and older. In sum, LHAs provide social support, counseling, education, and an organizational infrastructure to promote the health of their community.
LHAs can give five basic types of support: social, emotional, instrumental, informational, and appraisal in promoting annual mammography.
a. Social Support
LHAs are an important part of the community’s social network. Social support is given and received through one’s social network. A social network is a specific set of linkages among a defined set of persons, such as members of an extended family, members of an organization, or residents of a neighborhood. A woman’s perception regarding annual mammography and her decision to have annual mammography can be influenced by people, especially an influential person like yourself, in the community. By providing social support, individual women can more easily understand the importance of regular screening and more easily be encouraged to have it done.
b. Emotional support—listening, showing trust, and concern
LHAs can listen to women’s concerns regarding mammography. Lay Health Advisors can provide counseling as “an extension of the natural exchange of advice and feedback given to people who know and trust”33 each other.
c.Instrumental support—interpreting and time
LHAs can offer tangible aid, such as making appointments, interpreting during the appointment, and making transportation arrangements.
d. Informational support—providing advice, suggestions, and referrals
LHAs can advise women on the importance of punctuality in meeting a medical appointment and suggest ways to re-arrange daily routines in order to get mammography. LHAs can persuade community members to accept services offered in the community, such as annual mammography screening to detect breast cancer through the Breast and Cervical Cancer Control Program (BCCCP). They are to outreach, to teach, and to motivate members of the community to take advantage of services available in the community and health practices recommended by the health care professionals. LHAs may function as an advocacy group, meeting with community members and initiating interaction among members, such as organizing health fairs.
e. Appraisal support—affirmation and feedback.
LHAs can provide positive feedback after mammography is performed.
