Health News Latinos Can Use

An important, although not exclusive, step towards controlling cancer and chronic disease is delivering accurate, salient and actionable prevention information to the public. Since the news media represent pervasive sources of health information, understanding how these channels disseminate health research findings and prevention guidelines is essential. Disparities in access to health information plague many ethnic minority groups already burdened by disparities in health outcomes. The US Latino population provides an exemplary case of this, particularly considering potential language barriers. Spanish-language (SL) news media may play a significant role as purveyors of health information for many Latinos. This is the first research to address cancer and chronic disease prevention messages in SLTV news programming. As the largest SL network, Univisión provides a case example to examine the relevancy of news stories surrounding cancer and chronic disease prevention in morning, national evening and local evening news programs. Data were captured for one out of every four weeks for 6, 4, and 3 months, respectively. Additionally, four months of English-language evening news was collected for comparative purposes. Using ethnographic content analysis, visual, aural and contextual distinctions are explored in the presentation of prevention messages. Preliminary findings suggest: 1) differences in tone, depth and relevance of stories in morning vs evening programs; 2) chronic prevention stories are crowded by health crises; and 3) differences in relevance between SL and English-language programs. Results will contribute to minimizing the knowledge gap, subsequently reducing disparities in cancer and other chronic disease outcomes in the Latino population.