My mother's keeper: Raising breast cancer awareness in the Black family through upstream intergenerational communication

While many Black women are hailed as caregivers and leaders of their communities, they also often suffer from many health challenges, with health outcomes consistently trailing that of their racial/ethnic counterparts. Breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among women, and more Black women die of this cancer than women of any other racial/ethnic group. To address this disparity, we propose an innovative approach to health communication, capitalizing on the strength of the Black community to raise awareness about breast cancer and improve health outcomes.

Relaying information by word-of-mouth is a hallmark of the Black community; yet this tradition has not been widely used in a family context in public health. In the Black family, knowledge is typically passed from mothers to daughters; however, it is likely that daughters are exposed to comparatively more health information, namely through exposure to more dynamic environments (e.g., school, Internet, social media). One avenue to explore is whether health messages can be effectively relayed from daughters to mothers–Upstream Intergenerational Communication (UIC).

We will present the conceptual framework underpinning UIC and results of a pilot study using the approach to improve breast cancer awareness among Black women. This approach can potentially enhance health communication within the Black community and contribute to positive health outcomes among Black women. Moreover, this concept is innovative in that it recognizes that the intergenerational relationship is an untapped natural resource within the Black family that can be used as an asset when developing culturally-tailored public health interventions.