Use of home remedies in coping with arthritis pain among Latino women: Findings from focus groups

This poster will discuss the challenges that Latino women face in coping with arthritis pain and chronic diseases, the remedies they use in their daily lives and their desire for support services. A multi-year Community Based Participatory Research (CBPR) study, in Oregon enabled us to work closely with the Latino community in gaining valuable information about the challenges the women face, home remedies they use, their interests and enthusiasm for self-help programs and the best approaches to reaching the community.

This poster will highlight the findings from three focus group sessions that were held following a 600-person survey. We will present information about the kind of home remedies and folk medicine that Latino women use, other frequently used painkillers, concerns they expressed about their difficulty in communicating with their physicians about the use of home remedies, their perceptions of the causes of arthritis and barriers to self-management. We will also discuss how the focus-group information added to our previous survey findings and how it enabled us to fine-tune the self-management program and its delivery to Latino women dealing with arthritis pain and chronic diseases.