Health information seeking and support for South Asian immigrant cancer survivors

Background/Significance: Because the internet has replaced physicians as the primary health information source for cancer-survivors, it is important to uncover barriers and facilitators, such as educational and cultural differences, that affect their ability to find accurate and timely cancer information, particularly on-line. While Asian Americans are the fastest growing U.S racial/ethnic minority, 2) cancer is the leading cause of their death and 3) cancer knowledge is low among them, there is little research that has investigated their cancer information seeking strategies. Objective/Purpose: Due to extreme diversity within this population, this study aims to qualitatively examine the cancer information-seeking patterns of the second-largest Asian American group, South Asians. Methods: 90-minute to 2 hour in-person in-depth interviews are being conducted with a sample of 20 dyads, including 20 South Asian cancer survivors, varying by level of education (survivors with high school and lower vs. college and higher) and 20 of their information-support providing significant others (family member or friend). Questions address a range of domains including expectations, experiences, behaviors and underlying needs that shape cancer health information seeking. Results: South Asian cancer survivors, whether they had high school education or college education, tended to collaborate with or rely entirely on a family member to manage their information needs and health-related decision-making. Those with high school or less education appear to more likely do so. Discussion/Conclusions: To better understand health information seeking for Asian Americans, particularly recent immigrants, models of culturally collaborative or surrogate information seeking are needed compared to existing models assuming autonomous individual information-seeking. For many South Asian cancer survivors, the very fabric of life is intertwined with that of family/friends due to cultural, logistical, and linguistic dependency. Such a conceptualization would allow interventions to adapt health information resources/channels to more relevantly meet the needs of these sub-populations.