SHE Tribe

She’s Healthy and Empowered Tribe, SHE Tribe, is a social network-based healthy lifestyle intervention designed for women. At each SHE Tribe gathering, women pursue a lifestyle of health by making small changes that empower action for lifelong wellbeing. The model is the result of a Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) approach to develop a wellness program that appeals to women from diverse communities.  The CBPR workgroup included personnel from UNTHSC and the Community Council, as well as community representatives. Maximizing the strength of women’s social networks, SHE Tribe provides participants with facilitated guidance in 5 different areas of well-being:  goals, self-care, physical activity, nutrition, and social support. Each gathering uses a SET-DO-RELFECT format where participants set individual goals, practice health behaviors, and reflect on their interest and motivation for making small healthy lifestyle changes.

To facilitate small changes in health behavior, community members and researchers jointly developed an assessment tool that generates a wellness score for 5 domains of health: me (general behaviors and wellbeing), mind (mental health), matter (what you put into your body), move (physical activity), and meet (relationships and support).  The assessment is administered via web-link through Computerized Authoring Intervention Software (CIAS), where scores are calculated by domain to provide individualized feedback guided by Motivational Interviewing (MI) techniques.  This feedback promotes awareness of health behaviors and stimulates reflection and planning about future health goals.

The plan for sustainability is for participants who enjoy the program to be inspired to lead their own SHE Tribe with women from their social networks; thereby promoting a culture of health. SHE Tribe is currently being piloted in small groups.  This work was supported by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities Exploratory Centers of Excellence of the National Institutes of Health under award number P20MD006882. For more information about SHE Tribe, contact Emily Spence-Almaguer (Principal Investigator) or Katherine Cantu Anguiano (Project Coordinator).