Minority Health and Health Equity Archive
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/21769
Welcome to the Minority Health and Health Equity Archive (MHHEA), an electronic archive for digital resource materials in the fields of minority health and health disparities research and policy. It is offered as a no-charge resource to the public, academic scholars and health science researchers interested in the elimination of racial and ethnic health disparities.
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Item The contributions of health communication to eliminating health disparities.(2004) Freimuth, Vicki S; Quinn, Sandra CrouseThe pressing need to eliminate health disparities calls on public health professionals to use every effective tool possible. Health communication, defined as the study and use of methods to inform and influence individual and community decisions that enhance health, was first recognized as a subset of the field of communication in 1975, when the Health Communication Division of the International Communication Association was founded.1,2 The National Communication Association formed a division of the same name in 1985. In 1997, the Public Health Education and Health Promotion section within the American Public Health Association formally recognized health communication as part of . . .Item Ethics in public health research: protecting human subjects: the role of community advisory boards.(2004) Quinn, Sandra CrouseIncreasingly, researchers grapple with meaningful efforts to involve communities in research, recognizing that communities are distinct from individuals. We also struggle to ensure that individual participants in research are fully protected. Community advisory boards (CABs) offer an opportunity to adopt a relationships paradigm that enables researchers to anticipate and address the context in which communities understand risks and benefits, and individuals give consent. CABs provide a mechanism for community consultation that contributes to protecting communities and fostering meaningful research. Furthermore, CABs can help us to re-create informed consent as a process. It is critical that we conduct research to understand the role of CABs in the informed consent process.Item The Role of Community Advisory Boards: Involving Communities in the Informed Consent Process(2001) Strauss, Ronald P.; Sengupta, Sohini; Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Goeppinger, Jean; Spaulding, Cora; Kegeles, Susan M.; Millett, GregEthical research involving human subjects mandates that individual informed consent be obtained from research participants or from surrogates when participants are not able to consent for themselves.The existing requirements for informed consent assume that all study participants have personal autonomy; fully comprehend the purpose, risks, and benefits of the research; and volunteer for projects that disclose all relevant information. Yet contemporary examples of lapses in the individual informed consent process have been reported. The authors propose the use of community advisory boards, which can facilitate research by providing advice about the informed consent process and the design and implementation of research protocols. These activities could help reduce the number of individual informed consent lapses,benefiting study participants and the scientific integrity of the research in question.Item Belief in AIDS as a Form of Genocide: Implications for HIV Prevention Programs for African Americans(1997) Quinn, Sandra CrouseThe purpose of this article is to examine factors associated with belief that AIDS is a form of genocide and trust in federal government reports on AIDS in a cross-sectional sample of 1,054 black church members. Reports in both the professional literature and mass media have documented fears that AIDS is a form of genocide unleashed on black Americans, and distrust of reports on AIDS.Results from this study demonstrate that a substantial number of participants believe that belief in genocide is not accounted for by levels of AIDS knowledge. Belief in genocide may be a modern urban legend that need not be a barrier for AIDS education. Implications for development of AIDS education sensitive to the cultural context of African Americans are described.Item The Characteristics of Northern Black Churches with Community Health Outreach Programs(1994) Thomas, Stephen B.; Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Biingsley, Andrew; Caldwell, CleopatraOBJECTIVES. The Black church has a long history of addressing unmet health and human service needs, yet few studies have examined characteristics of churches involved in health promotion. METHODS. Data obtained from a survey of 635 Black churches in the northern United States were examined. Univariate and multivariate statistical procedures identified eight characteristics associated with community health outreach programs: congregation size, denomination, church age, economic class of membership, ownership of church, number of paid clergy, presence of other paid staff, and education level of the minister. RESULTS. A logistic regression model identified church size and educational level of the minister as the strongest predictors of church-sponsored community health outreach. The model correctly classified 88% of churches that conduct outreach programs. Overall, the model correctly classified 76% of churches in the sample. CONCLUSIONS. Results may be used by public health professionals and policy makers to enlist Black churches as an integral component for delivery of health promotion and disease prevention services needed to achieve the Year 2000 health objectives for all Americans.Item Light on the Shadow of the Syphilis Study at Tuskegee(2000) Thomas, Stephen B.; Quinn, Sandra CrouseIn the 1940s, with the disclosure that Nazi doctors had conducted experiments on humans, the term research crime appeared for the first time. Most Americans believed such abuses could never happen here. On a hot day in July 1972, however, the national front-page news described an experiment sponsored by the U.S. government. In Macon County, Alabama, a large group of Black men had gone untreated for syphilis. Over 4 decades, as some of them died, the U.S. government went to great lengths to ensure that the men in the Tuskegee Study were denied treatment, even after penicillin had become the standard of care in the mid-1940sItem African Americans' views on research and the Tuskegee Syphilis Study(2001) Freimuth, Vicki S.; Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Thomas, Stephen B.; Cole, Galen; Zook, Eric; Duncan, TedThe participation of African Americans in clinical and public health research is essential. However, for a multitude of reasons, participation is low in many research studies. This article reviews the literature that substantiates barriers to participation and the legacy of past abuses of human subjects through research. The article then reports the results of seven focus groups with 60 African Americans in Los Angeles, Chicago, Washington, DC, and Atlanta during the winter of 1997. In order to improve recruitment and retention in research, the focus group study examined knowledge of and attitudes toward medical research, knowledge of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, and reactions to the Home Box Office production, Miss Evers' Boys, a fictionalized version of the Tuskegee Study, that premiered in February, 1997. The study found that accurate knowledge about research was limited; lack of understanding and trust of informed consent procedures was problematic; and distrust of researchers posed a substantial barrier to recruitment. Additionally, the study found that, in general, participants believed that research was important, but they clearly distinguished between types of research they would be willing to consider participating in and their motivations for doing so.Item Framing a Transdisciplinary Research Agenda in Health Education to Address Health Disparities and Social Inequities: A Road Map for SOPHE Action(2006) Gambescia, Stephen F.; Woodhouse, Lynn D.; Auld, M. Elaine; Green, B. Lee; Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Airhihenbuwa, Collins O.the Healthy People 2010 goal of eliminating health disparities through its Strategic Plan. SOPHE held an Inaugural Health Education Research Disparities Summit, Health Disparities and Social Inequities: Framing a Transdisciplinary Research Agenda in Health Education, August 8 and 9, 2005. This article explains the process used at the Summit where more than 80 researchers, academicians, practitioners, and students from across the country convened to ask fundamental questions about health disparity associated with race and ethnicity and how a health education research agenda could help in eliminating these disparities. From this Summit, about a dozen questions and/or recommendations have been developed to frame our future discussions about health disparities. Through its Research Agenda Committee, SOPHE has developed a process of translation and dissemination, including community participation, review, dialogue, and action.Item The National Negro Health Movement: Lessons For Eliminating Health Disparities Today(2001) Quinn, Sandra CrouseFar too many of us trained in the health professions seek to address disparities in health status between communities of color and white Americans as if we are addressing a new problem. While there was little agreement on cause or solution, southern white physicians and black researchers such as W.E.B. DuBois documented health disparities in the early part of the 20th century.Item The National Negro Health Week, 1915 to 1951: A Descriptive Account(2001) Quinn, Sandra Crouse; Thomas, Stephen B.In 1914, Booker T. Washington, founder of Tuskegee Institute, viewed the poor health status of black Americans as an obstacle to economic progress and issued a call for "the Negro people... to join in a movement which shall be known as Health Improvement Week" (Patterson, 1939). Health Improvement Week evolved into the National Negro Health Week, observed annually for 35 years. This article provides an overview of the structure and activities of the National Negro Health Week and suggests implications for public health in the black community today.