Cambria Jones and Dr. Lynn Callister, Nursing

In recent years there has been a surge in the influx of Hispanic immigrants to the United States. With this influx of immigrants pushing beyond the border states into more central United States, healthcare providers have been presented with the challenge of how to adequately meet the needs of Hispanic immigrants.

Many of these immigrants are women in their childbearing years who do not have the social support that is part of their culture. To confront this problem, in Ogden, Utah, the Midtown Community Health Clinic is designed primarily for Latino women in their prenatal and post partum care. Most of the staff are bilingual and nurses translate for the doctors that speak only English. The patients that go to the clinic traditionally deliver their babies at McKay Dee Hospital and a translator is provided for their delivery.

In recent years the clinic has developed a program called the Hispanic Labor Friend’s Initiative. In this program bilingual women are assigned to a patient to be her translator and a form a social support through the prenatal to postpartum period. The Labor Friends program is designed so that these women go with patients to various prenatal appointments, and then the patients will call their Labor Friend when they go to the hospital so she can translate and help with paperwork in the hospital. The Labor Friend is also to attend their six week post partum visit.

My project was to do interviews and questionnaires for forty women who had received treatment from Ogden’s Midtown Community Clinic to evaluate the quality of care and response of participants in the program. My hypothesis was that those who participated in the program felt more social support and had decreased post partum depression. Twenty of these women were to have participated in Hispanic Labor Friend’s Initiative, and the other twenty that did not were to serve as a comparison. Part of the questionnaires and qualitative data included measurements of acculturation into the US culture and measurements of post partum depression. Part of the comparison was to see if participating in the Labor Friend’s Initiative as a support system helped decrease post partum depression. The interviews were to provide qualitative data about the effects of participating the program and finding out the difficulties of moving to the United States.

One of the major difficulties I had in performing this research was scheduling the interviews with the participants. At first the clinic tried scheduling the interviews to meet at the clinic, but because of transportation difficulties for the participants many did not come. It was more effective for me to call the women and schedule the interview in their own homes. Some of the difficulties doing interviews at their homes was distraction of children or other family members, but overall the participants were very accommodating and participated fully in the interviews and questionnaires. However, because this increased the time for interviews because of traveling, we cut the participants down from a total of forty to a total of twenty-one. Although this is a smaller group to make good quantitative comparisons, I feel that the qualitative data was sufficient enough to explore the effects of acculturation and the Hispanic Labor Friends’ Initiative. Professor Callister also did interviews with the Labor Friends and with some of the nurses at McKay Dee Hospital that were present for births attended by Labor Friends to provide triangulation of data.

After performing the interviews I found many commonalities that showed the importance of social networks among the Hispanic women. One example is that they each found out about the clinic from another Hispanic woman. Once at the clinic, most participants enjoyed going there because of the atmosphere they felt. One participant said, “We feel like [we’re in] Mexico, normal.” Many commented that they enjoyed having nurses and sometimes doctors who spoke to them in Spanish. Some participants felt that improvements could be made at the clinic. Some of the complaints about the clinic was the scheduling. Another participant said that she felt some that Hispanic bilingual workers there were racist against the Hispanics that didn’t know English. Although some gave recommendations for improvement, most had positive opinions.

None of the participants spoke negatively about the Hispanic Labor Friends’ Initiative or their Labor Friends. Many of them enjoyed someone they could call before the birth if they needed help or had questions. They also expressed gratitude for help with translation and paperwork at the hospital. Others commented on the social support the Labor Friends gave that they would not otherwise have due to being so far from their families. One said, “It was as if my mother was there. . . I really think God sent her so I didn’t feel so alone.” All patients who had a Labor Friend said they would recommend this program to other women because of the support and help it gave them. As I hypothesized, the participants appreciated the extra social support they received from the Labor Friends.

Even though all participants appreciated the Labor Friends, some had suggestions for improvement. Many of the participants did not even know the name of the program and did not understand they needed to call their Labor Friend when they gave birth. Some of the participants wished for more contact with their Labor Friend before the birth. None of the participants had a Labor Friend with them at their postpartum appointment. Even though this program is designed to last through the post partum period, it did not extend beyond the participants’ hospital stay. This surprised me, and I wasn’t able to evaluate the effects of having a program that lasted through the post partum period. This is an area that could use further research.

Based on the qualitative data, my recommendations for the program are to give a written information to participants so they understand the program better, and to assign Labor Friends six weeks before the due date so they have more time to get to know the participant. However, I believe from the qualitative data that having a Labor Friend made their pregnancy, birth, and labor a more positive experience. Participants who did not have a Labor Friend were also positive about the clinic and the translators they had at the hospital. I am still waiting to receive the reports back in differences in the quantitative data to analyze as well.

I am currently working to write my findings into an article to submit to a scholarly journal. I also will integrate my research into my honors thesis.