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Participating institutions name and acronyms

Institute of Nutrition of Central America and Panama (INCAP)

Grand Challenges Canadá

CIIPEC Researchers

Anne Marie Chomat, MD, MPH

Manuel Ramírez-Zea, MD, PhD

Other collaborating researchers

Duncan Pedersen, MD, MPH

Ricardo Araya, MRCPsych, PhD

Funding agency

Grand Challenges Canada

Grands Defis Canada

General objective

On the first phase of the project the objectives are:

1.Increase the comprehension of psychosocial stress and mental disease of women on reproductive age, as they are perceived among the rural and urban marginalized communities from Quetzaltenango.

2.Increase our knowledge about the resources –formal and informal – available for women who fight to overcome the high levels of psychosocial stress.

3.Assess the needs of the community for an intervention project, interests and the capacities of community health promoters and midwives on participating as leaders on the presentation of the intervention and the specifications required for carrying out a second phase.

 The second phase of the study will be developed based on the results of the first phase and a protocol will be filed before the ethics committee for its approval. This phase aims to empower the marginalized communities to care and promote health and wellbeing of women and their children. On phase 2 the objectives are:

1.Develop local capacities among community leaders to identify women that are facing high levels of adversity and have psychosocial stress signs.

2.Provide such women with tools (educative, practical and social) to help them overcome and diminish local adversities through women therapy groups.

3.Enhance community networks for them to support community leaders, women who have high levels of psychosocial stress and women therapy groups.

4.Taking into account community resources and local traditions, to reach sustainability along time to reproduce the initiative on similar contexts.

5.Contribute to the self-sufficiency of women and the therapy groups of women for the creation of microenterprise that allow the sustainability of the group activities, and provide financial independence of the participants.

Methodology

Participatory action research (PAR)

The project will be based on the participatory action research (PAR) method, to contribute to solve health problems promoting a mutual confidence environment and collaboration between researchers and community members. The PAR methodology will help to assure the local relevance of the project, contextualizing methods and results, and facilitating the translation of the research results for them to be relevant and make sense for local action.

Research methods

The mixed research methods (qualitative and quantitative) aim to obtain information for a better comprehension of human experiences, perceptions, motivations, intentions and behaviors of the participants of the project based on the description and observation. Such contextualized and culturally rich information may be critical to contextualize quantitative data. This phase was carried out through structured questionnaires, semi structured interviews and focus groups. The application of these methods will allow to carry out a profound research as well as to understand the different local perspectives and their experiences.