AMIGAS Community Health Worker’s Guide

If you reach out to women in your community to help them make positive changes for their health, this guide is for you. Your title may be promotora de salud, outreach worker, caseworker, or community health worker. The title you have is not important for AMIGAS. What matters is that you are going to talk to women about cervical cancer and how cervical cancer screening can help women stay healthy.

This guide contains an overview of the AMIGAS program. AMIGAS stands for “Ayudando a las Mujeres con Información, Guía y Amor para su Salud.” In English, this means “Helping Women with Information, Guidance, and Love for their Health.”

AMIGAS was made especially for Hispanic women and Latinas who are between 21 and 65 years of age. AMIGAS is for you to use to encourage women in your community to get tested for cervical cancer.

This guide will show you how to use AMIGAS tools when you talk with women in your community. We hope you will use them to help your friends and neighbors learn more about cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening. You can help save women’s lives!

What Is AMIGAS?

AMIGAS is—

• A program to encourage cervical cancer screening for Latinas who are between 21 and 65 years of age.
• Made for use by community health workers or other lay health educators.

AMIGAS can be—

• Used with one woman or with a group of women.
• Used in a woman’s home, a community setting, or remotely via teleconference.

This guide will help you plan and carry out individual and group sessions that encourage Latinas to get screened for cervical cancer. You may decide to talk only about cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening, or to combine the important points about getting screened with another health topic you already discuss.

What Are the Important Points?

After you receive training, you will be ready to share what you know about cervical cancer and cervical cancer screening with other women. You will prepare an AMIGAS tool box and use the AMIGAS tools to talk with women.

Remember these important points to tell women, and the actions you want them to take—

• Getting screened for cervical cancer can help women stay healthy.
• Cervical cancer is easier to treat if it is found early.
• It is important for women to get screened for cervical cancer.
• Women can get screened in this community.
• Make a promise to yourself and your family to make and keep your cervical cancer screening appointment.

We want women in our community to understand—

• That a Pap test can find changes in the cervix before they turn into cancer.
• That a Pap test can find cancer early, when treatment works best.
• That an HPV test looks for the virus (human papillomavirus) that can cause cell changes.
• The latest cervical cancer screening recommendations.
• Where and how to get a cervical cancer screening test.
• Why it’s important to commit to an action plan to get screened for cervical cancer.