Utilizing an interdisciplinary community-based approach, faculty members from Nutrition &
Dietetics, Nursing, and the School of Social Work delivered a ten-session Training the Trainer project
for members of the Bhutanese community in Scranton, Pennsylvania. The objectives of the
Training the Trainer project were to enhance the capacities of the Bhutanese community to: (1) acquire
working knowledge of the United States health care and education systems, (2) increase their
awareness of disease prevention and healthful nutrition practices, (3) assist in the integration of
United States cultural values and norms with their own ethnic culture, and (4) encourage and support
a sharing of this knowledge throughout the Bhutanese community in Scranton, Pennsylvania.
The Training the Trainer project aimed to empower the Bhutanese community by encouraging the
immigrants to become trainers of a community health training program and become acculturated
about the American health systems and American culture and norms. The training contents
evolved from feedback provided by the members of the Bhutanese community participating in a
Health Care Forum as well as a subgroup of those same attendees who participated in three focus
group sessions. In addition to health-related information, the training the trainer project addressed
a range of acculturation-related topics. This paper described the process of delivering a community
health project that employed an interdisciplinary, community-based, empowerment approach in an
effort to build Bhutanese immigrants’ capacity. The Training the Trainer program was completed
in December, 2012 and as of June 2013, the Bhutanese trainees and the university instructors are in
the process of making a bilingual (English & Nepali) training manual. As an outcome of this project,
the curriculum of the Training the Trainer program is presented as well as implications for social
work practice.