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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Recorded presentation

Anastacia Marx de Salcedo, Communications Group c/o Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 250 Washington Street, 4th Floor, Boston, MA 02108, 6178760118, anastacia@cgrouphq.com and Mary Lou Woodford, RN, MBA, CCM, Women's Health Network, Massachusetts Department of Public Health, 250 Washington Street, 4th floor, Boston, MA 02108.

Diet and physical activity are important risk factors for heart disease and stroke. But disparities in access to health information limit the ability of low-income and non-English-speaking individuals to make the lifestyle changes that promote long-term health. We developed a culturally and linguistically appropriate nutrition and physical activity program for low-income and low-literacy English, Spanish, Portuguese and Chinese-speaking women. The CDC funded Healthy Heart Program is currently being field tested and is potentially a nationwide model. We started with the PACE (Patient-centered Assessment and Counseling for Exercise and Nutrition, also CDC funded) program developed by San Diego State University, which has had demonstrated success in changing the behaviors of middle class, English-speaking populations. Our approach had three key innovations: 1) to strip down the program to its core content--eliminating any middle-class bias--and providing it in the simplest language possible, 2) to gather information directly from the target populations on their practices, beliefs, obstacles and opportunities and 3) to create 4 different versions of the program (one for each language group) by combining the stripped-down core content with the culturally-specific customizations generated by the target populations themselves. Presentation topics include project history, research methods and findings, adaptation strategy, implementation and planned evaluation.

Learning Objectives:

• -Understand basic principles of doing primary research with hard-to-reach populations, especially undocumented immigrants.
• -Understand basic principles of developing health communications materials for low-literacy and non-English speaking populations.
• -Understand how to adapt mainstream programs for use by low-income, low-literacy and non-English speaking populations.

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Any relevant financial relationships? No

Recorded presentation