Helping “People Like Me”: Reducing Diabetes Health Disparities through Culturally and Linguistically Appropriate Strategies

Objective:: To identify and examine motivational drivers for the study of culturally relevant strategies for African Americans and Hispanics with diabetes.

Methods: Qualitative study involving in-depth interviews and focus groups with African American (n=44), Hispanic (n=37) and White (n=10) adults living with diabetes. All interviews were conducted by an independent market research firm, and interviewers were of the same race/ethnicity as the participants. Participant encounters were recorded and analyzed for emerging themes. These themes and sample communication channels were reviewed and endorsed by a panel of external expert physicians from well-respected clinical and research centers and academia, including: Columbia University, UCLA, University of Colorado, Harvard and the Cleveland Clinic. Two clinical panelists also provided their extensive research to help guide our strategies – research that focused on the effects of racial and cultural backgrounds of patients with chronic disease on clinical outcomes.

Results: Despite inter- and intra-cultural differences, four key engagement drivers emerged for our target populations. A post-deployment follow-up series of focus groups of African Americans and Hispanics with diabetes to evaluate responses to the developed strategies based on these drivers and to determine whether any of the material was found to be insensitive or inappropriate revealed key findings that were similar across both groups with some specific differences.

Conclusion: Both communities would benefit from culturally relevant strategies that include motivational drivers among our African American and Hispanic members with diabetes that are different from our White members. These key drivers were central to our pilot outreach communications strategy.