Our Lives Were Healthier Before: Focus Groups With African American, American Indian, Hispanic/Latino, and Hmong People With Diabetes

Abstract

Focus groups were conducted to explore health-related beliefs and experiences of African American, Hispanic/Latino, American Indian, and Hmong people with diabetes and engage community members in improving diabetes care and education for these populations. Eighty participants attended 12 focus groups, 3 per population. Major themes were loss of health attributed to modern American lifestyles, lack of confidence in the medical system, and the importance of spirituality. Participants recommended improvements in the areas of health care, diabetes education, social support, and community action. Their recommendations emphasize the importance of respectful, knowledgeable health care providers; culturally responsive diabetes education for people with diabetes and their families; and broad-based community action. These recommendations align with current public health priorities and medical knowledge. It is proposed that healthy traditions from diverse populations can be leveraged to improve the health of all people with diabetes.

The relationship between health literacy and knowledge improvement after a multimedia type 2 diabetes education program

“…One hypothesis for why African-Americans may have learned less after viewing the MDEP is that African Americans may have a health belief model about diabetes that is different than those of nonHispanic Whites [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34]. Their health belief model may not correlate with a biomedical model of diabetes, and thus, these prior beliefs and knowledge may interfere with learning new knowledge about diabetes.…”

“…Using the same data set as above, we regressed the full S-TOFHLA score on the reading comprehension score. We then applied the previously published cutoffs for the full S-TOFHLA categories of inadequate (0-53), marginal (54-66), and adequate (67-100) to determine corresponding categories for the reading comprehension scores alone, which were: ''inadequate'' (0-16), ''marginal'' (17)(18)(19)(20)(21)(22) and ''adequate'' (23)(24)(25)(26)(27)(28)(29)(30)(31)(32)(33)(34)(35)(36). The Spearman correlation coefficient between the categories for the full S-TOFHLA and the categories for the reading comprehension passages was 0.93, and the agreement between the two methods was 91% (i.e., 9% of people were classified differently by using just the reading comprehension passages.…”

Acculturation and Healthy Lifestyle Among Latinos With Diabetes

“…This fi nding is especially pertinent in light of previous studies demonstrating that Latinos have diffi culty in maintaining healthy traditional habits while adapting to the mainstream culture, which may be due to a lack of perceived behavioral control, as they are unable to develop strategies to protect these benefi cial traditional habits. [27][28][29] Acculturation has been linked to the likelihood of developing diabetes, as well as to quality of care, with more-acculturated individuals receiving better care. 8,13 Little research has focused on the impact of acculturation on diet among Latinos with diabetes, however.…”

Final report: Participatory evaluation of the Lummi nation's community mobilization against drugs initiative/Bureau of Justice assistances Indian Alcohol and Substance Abuse Demonstration Project

“…One of the reasons the focus group format was chosen was because it has been used with considerable success with American Indians (see e.g., Devlin, et al 2006;Severson and Wilson Duclos 2003;and Poupart and Becker 1997). Focus groups offer a means to explore thoughts and views contextually in an open, non-threatening environment.…”