Promoting Health Equity with Information Therapy
By Cindy Throop | Popularity: 65%
African American men have the highest incidence and death rates for prostate cancer than any other racial/ethnic group in the US. How can information therapy (Ix) promote increased health equity in prostate cancer outcomes? One of the functions of Ix is to deliver relevant health information to consumers where they are – in this case, the barber shop.
Research suggests that community-based education efforts by barbers could increase prostate cancer screenings among African American men. Barbers were trained on an educational intervention based on the principles of Paulo Freire’s critical pedagogy. In this ongoing pilot study, barbers ask male clients over the age of 40 if they have been screened for prostate cancer. Clients who have not been screened are educated about prostate cancer and informed that they are a candidate for screening.
The training resulted in a statistically significant increase in barbers’ knowledge of prostate cancer. Screening rates are not yet available, but preliminary results from qualitative interviews indicate increased knowledge about prostate cancer in clients.
If you are interested in promoting health equity, join us at the 7th Annual Ix Conference in Washington, DC on June 11 and 12. The Ix and Health Disparities track on June 12 will address promising new interventions that have been developed to narrow health disparities.
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May 23rd, 2008 at 2:10 pm
Cindy,
You’re absolutely right about the need to reach consumers about health issues where they are. For example, in the PCHIT Initiative and other interventions, organizations have had great success in deploying community health workers or promotoras in reaching out to underserved populations.
This not only is effective because we’re meeting people where they are with people they can identify/communicate with, etc., but we’re also better managing scarce health resources (i.e., highly trained & expensive health professionals).
Your example does raise interesting questions about how we structure the information given to barbers or community health workers. In this case, the decision about whether to get a prostate cancer screening can be controversial and depends on many individual characteristics. That doesn’t at all mean that it should stop us from doing that outreach, but it just highlights that there are many challenges in figuring out how to structure the informational intervention.
Josh