PROMOTING UPTAKE OF A USUAL SOURCE OF CARE AMONG AFRICAN AMERICAN MEN

描述(由申请者提供)：与大多数其他人口和种族群体相比，非洲裔美国男性的健康状况不成比例地更差。例如，与所有其他男性相比，非裔美国人男性的高血压发病率更高，心脏病死亡率更高，大多数主要癌症的发病率也更高。他们比大多数其他种族和民族的男性和女性平均早死5到10年。造成这些差距的一个公认因素是缺乏通常的卫生保健来源。拥有一个普通的提供者对非裔美国男性的健康特别有益，因为始终如一的提供者可以建立信任，提供定期的预防性护理，并更好地管理长期护理，以改善结果。然而，旨在促进非裔美国人男性中常见护理来源的公共卫生干预措施尚未得到广泛传播。在公共卫生运动中成功使用的一种方法是健康营销，以影响人口中的不同亚群。健康营销方法是一种多步骤研究战略，通过该战略，构成特定人群的个人(例如，非裔美国人男性)被有意义地分类为不同的子组，其成员共享与标准相关的一系列特征(例如，具有通常的护理来源)。使用这一策略，在健康促进干预中，为每个确定的亚组定制健康沟通。这项拟议研究的目标是：(A)应用健康营销战略来确定和描述非洲裔美国男性中关于拥有通常护理来源的不同亚群的特征，以及(B)探索亚群内对信息内容和沟通渠道的偏好，以最有效地促进这些男性接受通常的护理来源。该项目的研究计划分为两个阶段。首先，统计分类技术将被用来根据选定的预测变量(例如，医疗不信任、男性气概的各个方面)与与通常护理来源相关的行为之间的关系来识别非洲裔美国人男性的特定亚群。第二，将由已确定的分组中的男子组成焦点小组，以便更好地了解与非裔美国男子拥有通常护理来源相关的因素，并探索对可能在不同分组中最具信息量和激励作用的保健沟通方法的偏好。使用这种健康营销方法，在未来的健康促进干预中，可以为每个特定的亚群定制健康传播。拟议的研究结果将加强未来量身定做的干预措施的成功，旨在增加脆弱的非裔美国男性对一种常见的医疗保健来源的接受。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): African American men experience disproportionately poorer health outcomes compared to most other demographic and racial groups. For example, compared to all other males, African American men have a higher incidence of uncontrolled hypertension, higher death rate from heart disease, and a higher incidence of most of the major cancers. They die on average 5 to 10 years earlier than men and women of most other racial and ethnic groups. One factor recognized as a contributor to these disparities is lack of a usual source of health care. Having a usual provider is particularly beneficial to the health of African American men because consistent providers can establish trust, provide regular preventive care, and better manage care on a long- term basis for improved outcomes. Yet public health interventions aimed at promoting a usual source of care among African American men have not been widely disseminated. One approach that has been used successfully in public health campaigns to influence different subgroups within a population is health marketing. The health marketing approach is a multi-step research strategy by which individuals comprising a given population (e.g., African American men) are meaningfully classified into distinct subgroups whose members share a constellation of characteristics relevant to a criterion (e.g., having a usual source of care). Using this strategy, health communications are custom tailored for each identified subgroup in a health- promoting intervention. The goals of the proposed study are (a) to apply health marketing strategies to identify and characterize distinctive subgroups of African American men with respect to having a usual source of care, and (b) to explore preferences within subgroups for message content and communication channels that will be most effective in promoting uptake of a usual source of care among these men. The research plan of the project consists of two phases. First, statistical classification techniques will be used to identiy specific subgroups of African American men according to relationships between selected predictor variables (e.g., medical mistrust, various facets of masculinity) and behaviors related to having a usual source of care. Second, focus groups will be formed from men in the identified subgroups in order to better understand factors associated with African American men's having a usual source of care and to explore preferences for health communications approaches that might be most informative and motivating within the different subgroups. Using this health marketing approach, health communications can then be custom tailored for each particular subgroup in a future health-promoting intervention. Results of the proposed study will enhance the success of future tailored interventions designed to increase the uptake of a usual source of healthcare among vulnerable African American men.