Jan 27, 2014 - of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Texas-El Paso Occupational. Therapy Program, Health Matters First of Florida, Inc. P.O. Box 64, ...
Community Medicine & Health Education Editorial
Piven, J Community Med Health Educ 2014, 4:1 http://dx.doi.org/10.4172/2161-0711.1000e123
Open Access
Culturally-Tailored Education Programs to Address Health Literacy Deficits and Pervasive Health Disparities among Hispanics in Rural Shelbyville, Kentucky: From an Occupational Therapy Perspective Emily F Piven* Associate Professor, College of Nursing and Health Sciences, University of Texas, USA
Keywords: Cultural sensitivity; Occupational therapy This is an editorial addressing the recently published article in the Journal of Community Medicine and Health Education: CulturallyTailored Education Programs to Address Health Literacy Deficits and Pervasive Health Disparities among Hispanics in Rural Shelbyville, Kentucky [1]. The authors have identified health literacy as a pervasive issue across the U.S.A., affecting one third of the population who cannot read above the 7th-8th grade level. The impact of low health literacy among the Hispanic-American population, the largest group with health disparities that are underserved and disadvantaged, has led to severe health risks, less access to health care, and higher morbidity. I found the findings of this article to be most useful for my profession of occupational therapy. Occupational therapists are rehabilitation professionals that enable “people across the lifespan to accomplish everything they want or need to do to function in all areas of daily life (self-care, work, leisure) by embedding common everyday activities (called occupations) into treatment” [2]. The focus of our intervention is to assist people of all ages, racial, and ethnic backgrounds to learn to develop the new skills and behaviors that are needed to adapt and cope with interruptions in their functional capacities. I have focused my comments regarding diabetes in Mexican-Americans, as this is my research specialty that created my interest in the findings of this study. Occupational therapists have been concerned about the best ways to approach health education of Hispanic-American clients with tertiary complications of diabetes, as most practitioners have seen the negative consequences of uncontrolled diabetes in clients, due to the current epidemic of diabetes in the U.S.A. Recently, some occupational therapists have initiated research in secondary prevention with Mexican-Americans using a group or population-based intervention, in order to prevent the tertiary complications of uncontrolled diabetes before they occur [3,4]. Other occupational therapists have provided a more individual approach to secondary prevention for people with diabetes [5,6]. This is a well-executed small pilot study of 43 temporarily unemployed Hispanic-American males. The authors surveyed stakeholders in health care in Shelbyville and gathered community concerns through health/social assessments. From this, five prioritized modules were developed to include: cardiovascular, nutrition, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, and sexually-transmitted diseases, capturing issues such as obesity, smoking, and high fat diets. Authors identified that the educational intervention was culturally-tailored because classes were delivered in Spanish, along with audio-visual materials, given in short sessions. Classes were held at the local community church, where participants were in comfortable surroundings, adding to the culturaltailoring of the intervention. Using a pretest-posttest design with a convenience sample, the authors described the setting, composition of the research group, general demographics and details about the delivery of their Environment and Your Health Program in two data points, thus allowing for assessment of post-test gains immediately following education and then determined retention of gains at nine J Community Med Health Educ ISSN: 2161-0711 JCMHE, an open access journal
months. The statistical results that compared short-term and long-term results of the intervention were presented clearly. The most important result was that the health education was retained long-term by 100% of the participants, which was highly significant at p
