Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #108696

Giang T. Nguyen, MD, MPH, Department of Family Practice and Community Medicine, University of Pennsylvania, 2 Gates/HUP, 3400 Spruce St., Philadelphia, PA 19104, (215) 615-0355, nguyeng@uphs.upenn.edu and Scarlett Bellamy, ScD, Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Pennsylvania, 629 Blockley Hall, 423 Guardian Drive, Philadelphia, PA 19104.

Asian Americans constitute one of the fastest growing segments of the population. Little is known about cancer information seeking in this diverse group, yet an understanding of this is vital for future health communication efforts and policies. The aim of this study is to characterize cancer information seeking preferences/behaviors of Non-Hispanic Asians (NHA) in the Health Information National Trends Survey. Data from HINTS were analyzed using weighted data. NHA had median TV, radio, magazine and newspaper usage rates similar to Non-Hispanic Whites (NHW). Unlike NHW, however, NHA were more likely to select the Internet as their top choice (out 14 options) when asked to imagine needing cancer information (52.9%). In contrast, only 36.7% of NHW said they would go to the web first. Among NHA, 56.6% had sought cancer information in the past (NHW, 49.0%). The most commonly cited primary information source for prior seekers was Internet for both NHA (57.8%) and NHW (50.5%). Surprisingly, healthcare providers (cited as the primary source for 11.2% of NHW) were only cited by 0.9% of NHA. It is unclear whether this suggests that NHA do not seek this information from healthcare providers at all, or that they simply do not go there as the initial source. Since HINTS was not designed specifically for Asians, and since it was only conducted in English and Spanish, those Asian Americans with low education, low income and limited English proficiency are poorly represented. Further study should include targeted surveys of these at-risk populations, using language appropriate questionnaires.

Learning Objectives:

At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to (
• identify key cancer information seeking behaviors among Asian Americans in the Health Information National Trends Survey, (
• identify limitations of using the HINTS data to generalize to all Asian American populations, and (
• to identify potential future studies to improve the understanding of cancer communication and Asian American populations.

Keywords: Asian Americans, Health Communications

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.