Achieving Cultural Appropriateness in Health Promotion Programs: Targeted and Tailored Approaches

Abstract

It is a truism of health education that programs and interventions will be more effective when they are culturally appropriate for the populations they serve. In practice, however, the strategies used to achieve cultural appropriateness vary widely. This article briefly describes five strategies commonly used to target programs to culturally defined groups. It then explains how a sixth approach, cultural tailoring, might extend these strategies and enhance our ability to develop effective programs for cultural groups. The authors illustrate this new approach with an example of cultural tailoring forcancer prevention in a population of lower income urban African American women.

Testing a culturally appropriate, theory-based intervention to improve colorectal cancer screening among native Hawaiians

“…Control arm-A non-Hawaiian nurse delivered a targeted educational presentation that included information on CRC's impact on Native Hawaiians (evidential); addressed the cultural context of lower-than-average insurance coverage and delayed access to care (sociocultural); and featured Native Hawaiian artwork (peripheral), words (linguistic), and faces (constituent-involving) [8]. All participants received a brochure on CRC that featured Native Hawaiian faces and the phone numbers for local providers.…”

“…Other researchers build a strong case for the cultural targeting of interventions using five strategies: (a) peripheral strategies (making materials attractive to the culture); (b) evidential strategies (presenting evidence of the relevance of the problem to the ethnic group); (c) linguistic strategies (using words and phrases from the group's language); (d) constituentinvolving strategies (drawing directly on the experience of members of the ethnic group), and (e) sociocultural strategies (recognizing and working from the group's cultural values, beliefs, behaviors, and context) [8]. These strategies have been shown to improve intervention effectiveness in tobacco cessation, diet change, and screening behaviors [8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

“…These strategies have been shown to improve intervention effectiveness in tobacco cessation, diet change, and screening behaviors [8][9][10][11][12][13].…”

Cultural, Economic, and Psychological Predictors of Colonoscopy in a National Sample

“…Cultural factors, which include values related to religion and spirituality and the extent to which it is important for patients to include family members in health care decisions, 10 are associated with a wide range of cancer prevention and control (CPC) behaviors. 11 However, the relationship between cultural factors and CRC screening is not well-understood.…”

ReGAE 1: using the Shah–Cross model as an orientating framework in African-Caribbean glaucoma research

“…Their responses indicated focal points of intervention within the local African-Caribbean community upon which glaucoma-related health education could be tailored. 33 The interview study and further research…”