Effectiveness of the Family Health History Training for Texas Health Educators

Background and purpose: Although Healthy People 2020 has added genomics as a new area for clinical and public health practice, many health educators lack genomic competencies to offer such practice. We have developed the first theory- and evidence-based family heath history (FHH) training curriculum for Texas health educators. The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of this training curriculum in increasing health educators' knowledge, attitudes, intention, and self-efficacy in providing FHH education to their clients. Methods: A total of 44 heath educators completed a baseline pre-workshop questionnaire, a 3-hour workshop in FHH training, and a post-workshop questionnaire.Results: Most (81.8%) health educators participating in the workshop were racial/ethnic minorities. The pre- and post-tests showed a significant improvement in the participants' knowledge (p=.005), attitudes (p<.001), intention (p=.002), and self-efficacy (p<.001) in providing FHH education to their clients (e.g., collecting FHH and making lifestyle recommendations). Participants' comments regarding the workshops were very positive. They included, but were not limited to, “I will definitely take this information and use it in my practice,” “I really enjoyed learning this information,” and “Very useful information. I like that the family history can be incorporated into different aspects of public health and health education.” Conclusions and discussion: The results indicate that our FHH training curriculum successfully improved Texas health educators' knowledge, attitudes, intention, and self-efficacy in providing FHH education to their clients. Disseminating this training to more health educators and follow-up studies assessing health educators' practice behaviors are needed.