Mexican american trial of community health workers: A randomized controlled trial of a community health worker intervention for mexican americans with type 2 diabetes mellitus

S.K. Rothschild, M.A. Martin, S.M. Swider, C.M.T. Lynas, I. Janssen, E.F. Avery and L.H. Powell

American Journal of Public Health, 2014, vol. 104, issue 8, 1540-1548

Abstract: Objectives. We assessed whether community health workers (CHWs) could improve glycemic control among Mexican Americans with diabetes. Methods. We recruited 144 Mexican Americans with type 2 diabetes between January 2006 and September 2008 into the single-blinded, randomized controlled Mexican American Trial of Community Health Workers (MATCH) and followed them for 2 years. Participants were assigned to either a CHW intervention, delivering self-management training through 36 home visits over 2 years, or a bilingual control newsletter delivering the same information on the same schedule. Results. Intervention participants showed significantly lower hemoglobin A1c levels than control participants at both year 1 D = -0.55; P = .021) and year 2 (D = -0.69; P = .005). We observed no effect on blood pressure control, glucose self-monitoring, or adherence to medications or diet. Intervention participants increased physical activity from a mean of 1.63 days per week at baseline to 2.64 days per week after 2 years. Conclusions. A self-management intervention delivered by CHWs resulted in sustained improvements in glycemic control over 2 years among Mexican Americans with diabetes. MATCH adds to the growing body of evidence supporting the use of CHWs to reduce diabetes-related health disparities.

Keywords: glycosylated hemoglobin; hemoglobin A1c protein, human, article; blood pressure; community care; controlled clinical trial; controlled study; ethnology; female; health auxiliary; human; male; methodology; Mexican American; middle aged; non insulin dependent diabetes mellitus; patient compliance; randomized controlled trial; self care; single blind procedure; statistics, Blood Pressure; Community Health Services; Community Health Workers; Diabetes Mellitus, Type 2; Female; Hemoglobin A, Glycosylated; Humans; Male; Mexican Americans; Middle Aged; Patient Compliance; Self Care; Single-Blind Method (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.2105/AJPH.2013.301439

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aph:ajpbhl:10.2105/ajph.2013.301439_2

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2013.301439

Access Statistics for this article

American Journal of Public Health is currently edited by Alfredo Morabia

More articles in American Journal of Public Health from American Public Health Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Christopher F Baum ().