Messengers' Training Workshop

The training workshop for the Messengers was held on July 24th and 25th 2002 at the Little Big Horn Tribal College. Messengers are Crow women who conduct cervical health outreach to all Apsáalooke women. Twenty-four women attended the workshop which was facilitated by the project coordinator, Alma McCormick, project staff, and an Indian Health Service physician, Dr. Deborah Sogge-Kermani.

The goals of the workshop were to provide:

• Messengers with knowledge about cervical health,
• Messengers with skills to plan and carry out cervical health outreach activities among all Crow women,
• Messengers with information about other health issues affecting Native women,
• Messengers with the opportunity to come together with the aim of helping all Crow women to be healthier.

We received assistance in developing our workshop and our manual from:

• Save Our Sisters from North Carolina
• Path to Understanding Cancer from Anchorage, Alaska
• T.E.A.L Clan Mother/Clan Father Training Manual from Oklahoma
• Tribal Outreach Strategies Participant’s Manual  - Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Minority Cancer Prevention Program, Arizona Cancer Center
• Messengers for Health Advisory Board Members
• Crow Community Members

Our manual and workshop topics included:

• Dedication
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Project Introduction
• Messengers
• Conducting one-on-one and group cervical health outreach
• Understanding Cancer
• Cervical Health
• Other important health issues
• Glossary of terms

The principles of our workshop were:

• Respect
• Knowledge 
• Skills
• Abilities as a natural helper
• Interactive
• Practice-based
• Fun
• Convey information to help Messengers help other Crow women

  Messengers completed a self-assessment assessing their cervical health knowledge before and after the training. The self-assessment had 21 items and the women could answer yes, no,  or don’t know. Examples of items include: having a Pap test can cause cervical cancer, smoking increases the risk for getting cervical cancer, family history is a risk factor for cervical cancer (it is hereditary), a woman can request a female doctor at IHS for her Pap test, and there are things a woman can do to prevent cervical cancer. Below is a table showing the changes in women's knowledge from pre- (before the workshop) to post- (after the workshop) assessment in the percent of responses that were correct and in the percent of responses that were don't know.

 

	% correct	% don’t know
Pre-assessment	62%	23%
Post-assessment	86%	2%

We ask a few open ended questions on the post-assessment as well. Questions and responses are shown below.

What else they would like to learn about in future workshops:

Menopause, healthy eating, breast cancer, other kinds of cancers, exercise, breast exams

What they liked best:

Detailed Pap information, videos, hands-on, “the whole works”, “everything was explained real to us”, informal, fun, the food, “the ability to be ourselves and to be spoken to as a woman and an individual”

What they would change:

More involvement with each participant even the quiet ones, men should be involved, the hard chairs, more hands-on

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