Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT) testing the “Cultivating Resilience” intervention

Despite leaving their homelands in search of a new future in the US, Latino/a immigrants and refugees benefit from a relative health advantage compared to US-born individuals. This is known as the “Immigrant Paradox”. Scientists have identified many reasons for this trend, but a primary one seems that immigrants that come to the US from Latin America have a wealth of cultural resilience factors and healthier lifestyles (more physically active, eat more fresh fruits and vegetables, consume less substances).

As they navigate the process of immigration and adaptation, immigrants and refugees face a myriad of challenges such as language barriers, family separations and reunification, and discrimination, which are known as acculturative stressors. To cope with these challenges, immigrants and refugees sometimes engage in unhealthy behaviors, ultimately giving rise to a range of physical and mental health conditions. These health declines contribute to health inequities experienced by this population. These trends are compounded by limited access to healthcare and community resources that could address these stressors.

To address this need, we worked with our community partners to co-design the “Cultivating Resilience” intervention (“Cultivando Fortaleza” in Spanish). Building on our community-engaged approach, we  combined elements of cognitive-behavioral therapies (CBTs) as well as cultural wisdom to enhance resilience and reduce the impact of stress. This resulted in an intervention that is both at the cutting edge of science, and is also relevant and appropriate for Latino immigrants and refugees. We also wanted to offer the intervention across our community in locales often frequented by this population so that we could facilitate participation.

Sustainability is at the heart of this endeavor. For this reason, we have been intentional to create a program that can persist in our local community beyond a research study. We are thus working with our community partners to capture data pertaining to the rolling out of the interventions across different sites and building and supporting the infrastructure for it to remain where we are initially testing it.  

In addition to testing of the intervention, students in our lab are leading sub-projects focused on developing a fidelity monitoring system for the intervention to assess facilitator adherence to the model, and are collecting data pertaining to perceptions of core vs. adaptable components of the intervention.