PROMOTORES DE SALUD MENTAL (PROMOTERS OF MENTAL HEALTH)

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2013

Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Service Area 7 Administration has undertaken a project dedicated to transforming services through the use of the Promotores de Salud Mental (Promoters of Mental Health). The Promotores model, used for health education, was adopted and expanded through this project to focus on mental health issues. The Promotores are a group of Spanish-speaking members of the Latino community, who have taken on leadership roles. In their first year as Mental Health Promotores, 2011-2012, they were trained on basic mental health topics and presentation skills. The training allowed them to become effective disseminators of mental health information, to act as the bridge between the mental health system and the primarily Spanish-speaking communities. These leaders have become educators and transformers of their own communities, providing mental health education and linkage to mental health services, for the culturally and linguistically underserved Latino community. In 1½ years, they have reached 2727 Spanish-speaking individuals through 276 mental health presentations in various schools, churches, and community agencies. Universally positive feedback indicated that the Promotores were skilled in delivering important information on mental health and related topics to which the population that they serve would otherwise not have had access.