Cómo se relacionan la salud y la herencia? Hispanic perceptions of family, health and heredity

Family history collection, personal risk education, and genetic testing are becoming increasingly common as tools to encourage disease prevention and healthy behavior. The successful design of these, and related, public health promotion interventions rests on a comprehensive understanding of health beliefs. Yet little is known about how Hispanics view health and disease within their family, how such views affect their own personal perception of disease risk, or to what degree Hispanics are knowledgeable about their medical family history, all with implications for how this population will understand and utilize genetic technologies and genomic information. To address this gap, we conducted a pilot interview study in a rural Hispanic population in Washington State. One-on-one, semi-structured interviews explored how people think about family history, how family history affects ideas of personal health risk, and how risk perception is related to understandings of and interest in genetics. This presentation will describe the ways in which rural Hispanic men and women understand heredity and its role in disease predisposition, and suggest implications for public health professionals when designing health promotion interventions, recruiting underserved communities into research, and/or disseminating research results.