PEI Success Stories: Campesinos

The Campesino Diabetes Management Program

Campesinos Sin Fronteras (CSF) is a grassroots organization founded by and for farmworkers in Yuma, Arizona. One of CSF’s flagship programs in an annual celebration day, Día del Campesino, at which community providers from across the county provide much needed services to farmworkers from Arizona and Sonora.

PEI and CSF partners have collaborated to build funding for and expertise of CSF community health workers to promote health and address chronic disease since 1998. The Campesino Diabets Management Program was an innovative effort to build a CHW support for diabetes management. This CHW community-clinical linkage program with the federally qualified health center, Sunset CHC provided health education, individual and group social support and patient advocacy for people with diabetes.

Many of CSF’s efforts, including the diabetes support groups, continue in the community today.The PEI helped the CHWs tell their story through a manual by and for CHWs on how to build a community support system for people with diabetes.  We also published two peer reviewed article to disseminate what we learned, one on the importance of spirituality in diabetes care and management and the other on the impact of CHW delivered social support on diabetes control. 

This is one of numerous evaluation efforts between CSF, the PEI and other community partners and an example of how we focus on

• Telling the community story
• Focusing on avenues for sustainability
• Include a socioecological perspective