Insights from Integrating Novel Community Practices of Shared Reading and Arts-Based Research in a Study of the Tertulias Women’s Peer Support Group Model

“Tertulias” (Spanish for “conversational gatherings”) was a study to test a novel peer support group intervention with the purpose of reducing depression and social isolation, and increasing empowerment and resilience, for participants who were women immigrants from Mexico. Tertulias integrated group shared reading (SR) and arts-based research (ABR) activities as novel components of the peer support model being tested. Tertulias was a large, randomized control trial involving 252 participants followed over 12 months, which fills a key gap in SR and ABR research. Results demonstrate that these two practices resulted in unique outcomes that would not have been obtained using traditional health promotion approaches and they revealed novel insights that would not have been able to be discerned using standard research techniques, including using standard community-engaged research techniques. Here, we describe SR and ABR in the outcomes of the study and what we learned about them as novel community practices. The experience of Tertulias with using and integrating SR and ABR demonstrates the valuable potential of these two approaches, used alone or together, for enhancing social connectedness among participants, deepening our understanding of the process and outcomes, and for strengthening community practice in the context of Community-Engaged Research.