PICOT Question: In African American population, how do culturally tailored education programs compared to lack of stroke awareness affect stroke management as a preventative measure in their lifetime?
Stroke among African Americans is a great concern since it has become a burden to middle and low-income families. Stroke is associated with high mortality rates and complications that are expensive to treat and manage. As a result, there is a need to engage African Americans in stroke education to ensure they participate in the management of the disease on the onset or before it affects them through identifying the symptoms effectively and seeking medication on time. According to Williams et al. (2019), educating black Americans on stroke through culturally-tailored programs improved stroke awareness on low-educated people, thereby increasing the possibility of effective intervention. Joo and Liu (2020) provided that culturally sensitive education is effective in training patients in a health care setting to improve their awareness of their health condition for effective management. Ojo et al. (2020) supported these findings through their research which found that culturally-based education increases community participation to allow medication adherence and improvement in risk knowledge, thereby improving patients' and physicians' education to enhance stroke management.
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Lack of awareness of stroke increases morbidity risks compared to those who have an awareness of the same. Lackland (2016) acknowledged that African American men and women have high cases of hypertension that leads to stroke because they are less informed than their white counterparts about the disease. As a result, stroke risk is two-fold in African American communities. Thus, health providers seek to create awareness of hypertension and high blood pressure in black American communities to control the increasing rate. However, there exist ethnic disparities in stroke-related disease awareness that hinder effective education and empowerment. As a result, these communities will continue experiencing disease burden if health care professionals fail to consider a more community-centric education approach to understand African American culture and how it contributes to stroke and help communities identify the risk factors to eliminate them. Understanding culture allows health care professionals to leverage salient aspects of stroke since the community will be actively engaged. Blixen et al. (2016) explained that education would leverage families' and communities' strengths to eliminate weaknesses in patients' lifestyles to improve their engagement in health care management.
The high-risk population lacks general knowledge on how they can manage their health effectively. According to Ibrahim and El-SayedSoliman (2016), lack of knowledge on stroke risk factors increases the health risk to the disease. Thus, there is crucial significance in using community-based education to increase awareness to high-risk populations while relating to their cultural practices and lifestyles to manage stroke effectively, lowering stroke incidences. Additionally, education would reduce ethnic disparity in health provision. Noonan et al. (2016) explained that systemic education based on the target community promotes investment in health education to empower African Americans to access health care to avoid risk factors that subject them to disease such as stroke. Thus, education ensures African Americans can identify health-related problems to stroke, such as hypertension and identify the multiple lifestyle behaviors that cause the problems. As a result, they will make informed decisions on their lifestyles to avoid stroke. Thus, culturally informed education will not only improve African Americans' awareness of stroke, but it will also reduce health disparities existing between middle and upper-income communities to reduce health burden in the country. The program is integrated to include the identification of available community resources to empower the community to improve their lifestyle through physical exercise. Engaging communities will provide active learning opportunities through demonstrations for them to gain knowledge on how to recognize stroke symptoms and how to seek emergency help when they appear.
References
Blixen, C. et al. (2016).Stroke recovery and prevention barriers among young African-American men: Potential avenues to reduce health disparities. Top Stroke Rehabilitation . https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4720961/
Ibrahim, R. & El-SayedSoliman, F. (2016). The Effect of Educational Program for High-Risk People about Stroke Prevention. Journal of Nursing and Health Science, 5 (4), 83-89. DOI: 10.9790/1959-0504028389
Joo, J. & Liu, M. (2020). Culturally tailored interventions for ethnic minorities: A scoping review. Nursing Open , 1-13. DOI: 10.1002/nop2.733
Lackland, D. (2016). Racial Differences in Hypertension: Implications for High Blood Pressure Management. American Journal of Medical Science, 348 (2), 135-138. Doi: 10.1097/MAJ.0000000000000308
Noonan, A. (2016). Improving the health of African Americans in the USA: an overdue opportunity for social justice. Public Health Reviews . https://publichealthreviews.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40985-016-0025-4
Ojo, T. et al. 2020).Adapting a skills-based stroke prevention intervention for communities in Ghana: a qualitative study. Implementation Science Communication . https://implementationsciencecomms.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s43058-020-00084-8
Williams, O. et al. (2019). Effect of Stroke Education Pamphlets vs a 12-Minute Culturally Tailored Stroke Film on Stroke Preparedness Among Black and Hispanic Churchgoers. JAMA Neurology . https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamaneurology/fullarticle/2736902
