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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Shoba Ramanadhan, MPH¹, Rachel Shelton, MPH¹, Emily Zobel Kontos, ScM², and K. Vish Viswanath, PhD³. (1) Department of Society, Human Development, and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, 7th Floor - SHDH, Boston, MA 02115, 617-512-7842, sramanad@hsph.harvard.edu, (2) Center for Community-Based Research, Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, 44 Binney Street SM248, Boston, MA 02115, (3) Department of of Society, Human Development and Health, Harvard School of Public Health, 677 Huntington Avenue, 7th Floor, Boston, MA 02115

Hispanics are often described as a homogenous group; as such, recommendations for communication campaigns and interventions for Hispanics do not always reflect the diversity that exists within this group. Hispanics differ across many dimensions including race, country of birth, citizenship, socioeconomic status, preferred language, level of acculturation, and media consumption patterns. Often one measure of diversity, such as language of interview, is used to segment the Hispanic population, but we argue that the addition of a small number of survey items can account for many more dimensions of diversity. This in turn can improve understanding of information patterns and ultimately advance information dissemination.

This study seeks to better capture diversity among Hispanics in order to present a more refined understanding of their health information-related patterns. Data come from the 2005 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS), a nationally representative sample of 5,394 American adults conducted by the National Cancer Institute. Hispanics with no history of cancer (n=458) were classified into three language assimilation levels according to language of interview, comfort with English, nativity, and number of years in the U.S. Level of language assimilation is a significant predictor of information-seeking, controlling for age, income, gender, education, and employment status (p<.01). Distinct profiles for groups are presented in terms of: 1) preferred sources for cancer information; 2) trust and attention paid to health information from mass media, providers and personal contacts; and 3) preventive health behaviors.

Learning Objectives:

• Describe the advantages of using multiple items to assess communication profiles among Hispanics.
• Recognize survey items that might be useful to capture heterogeneity among Hispanics with regards to health communication.
• Identify broad communication and preventive health behavior profiles for Hispanics at different levels of comfort with and use of English.

Keywords: Hispanic, Communication

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered