The SOL study has several important ancillary studies that seek to go deeper or expand the knowledge in many areas of the Hispanic health. Recently, we had the opportunity to talk to Elena Navas-Nacher, who is a pre-doctoral fellow at the Department Preventive Medicine of Northwestern University. She actually is finishing her work as Chicago coordinator for a diversity supplement grant that is part of the SOL study, which evaluates the psychometric properties of SOL instruments.
Elena stated the importance of this ancillary study, “We want to make sure these psychometric instruments are valid for Hispanic population because originally were developed for Caucasian populations, so we should know if they are culturally appropriate for our Hispanic communities.” The development of appropriate instruments is very important in research and the contribution of this ancillary study aims to fill a gap in this area.
The SOL study plays a key role because tries to restore the fact of limited information regarding health for diverse Hispanic communities in different parts of the country. Besides that, imminent potential benefits of SOL study would be coming in the short run as Elena said, “The SOL study will help our communities in improving their health when we can see what should be done in terms of program development, health education, and so on.”
Elena’s goal was to interview 100 SOL participants in Chicago. Other fellow researchers, Patricia Gonzales (San Diego) and Orit Weitzman (Miami) also completed interviews for a total of 350 SOL participants. After success in recruitment and enrollment of participants in this national SOL ancillary study, Elena is busy entering and analyzing data as previous steps to publish the study results that hopefully will come out very soon.
When we asked Elena about her thoughts on the SOL participants, she expressed her gratitude to all of them. “We really appreciate their involvement, care and interest in improving our community’s health, our future as Hispanics. So, I want to say thank you,” she said. Finally, she encouraged SOL participants to stay in touch with us because the SOL study has not finished yet; she stressed that participant’s health status should be followed over time, “There are many ways to stay in touch with our study such as to be involved through our newsletters, website or calling our phone number. I always encouraged them all to do that.” Then she said good bye. Conversation was over and we also had to say thank you to Elena for doing a good job.
Note: SOL study’s telephone number in Chicago is: 1-800-749-4765. If you are a past SOL participant and you have any questions regarding your participation, or want to update your contact information, just call this number. Bilingual staff is responding to calls.
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