Public health skills for a lay workforce: findings on skills and attributes from a qualitative study of lay health worker roles.

OBJECTIVES: To present a typology of attributes associated with lay health worker (LHW) roles drawn from a qualitative study of lay roles in the delivery of public health programmes. STUDY DESIGN: Qualitative research study of case studies of public health projects. METHODS: Five case studies of public health projects were undertaken, reflecting diverse roles, public health issues and populations. Semi-structured interviews and focus groups were carried out with a sample of 136 stakeholders, including commissioners, practitioners, LHWs and service users. Thematic analysis was conducted within and across cases. RESULTS: Findings on the pre-eminence of social skills associated with LHW roles were consistent across all five projects. Being approachable, non-judgemental and responsive to community needs were critical attributes that enabled LHWs to undertake outreach and communicate successfully with programme recipients. Experiential knowledge and cultural understanding were also important qualities. A typology of attributes associated with LHW roles is presented. CONCLUSIONS: Social skills, the ability to connect with a community, and the ability to develop respectful relationships are fundamental qualities for LHW roles. Further research would be required to produce a comprehensive map of LHW skills; however, the paper questions assumptions that lay skills are necessarily of a lower order than the professional skill set.

Cloning and characterisation of Myf5 and MyoD orthologues in Xenopus tropicalis.

The myogenic regulatory genes MyoD and Myf5 are members of the bHLH transcription factor superfamily. These genes are expressed as an early response to mesoderm induction in the frog Xenopus laevis. This paper describes our work to determine the conservation of sequence, expression and function of the early myogenic genes in the closely related diploid species Xenopus tropicalis. To this end we have cloned and sequenced Xenopus tropicalis homologues of Myf5 and MyoD and found a high degree of conservation in the nucleotide and amino acid sequences of both genes. The expression of Myf5 and MyoD in Xenopus tropicalis was assayed by in situ hybridisation and the expression patterns were found to be similar to those described in Xenopus laevis. The bHLH myogenic regulatory factors are known to be able to auto- and cross-activate expression of the myogenic genes. Interestingly, however, we found that while injection of mRNA coding for either Xenopus tropicalis myf5 (Xtmyf5) or Xenopus tropicalis myoD (XtmyoD) was capable of activating expression of the endogenous Xenopus laevis myoD (XmyoD) and cardiac actin genes, neither was capable of inducing expression from the endogenous Xenopus laevis (Xmyf5) gene.