PURPOSE: The Center for Minority Health (CMH) in the University of Pittsburghs Graduate School of Public Health established The Healthy Black Family Project, a program designed to increase awareness of the contribution of family health history to the development of chronic diseases. We assessed the impact of a family health history session on African Americans risk perceptions for the development of chronic diseases, which result from interactions between genes and the environment. The public health significance of this study was to delineate how participants perceived risks for developing chronic diseases (i.e., cancer, cardiovascular disease, etc.) would shape risk-reducing behavior modifications and utilization of preventive services.
METHODS: Participants (n=175) completed interviews to create a family health history (or pedigree), a schematic representation of health history information in a family. Of these individuals, a total of 125 participants completed surveys that assessed their perceptions of risk for nine chronic diseases. For the purpose of this study, statistical analysis was limited to colorectal cancer (CRC) and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Assessments of risk perception before and following the family health history sessions were calculated to assess changes in accuracy of risk.
RESULTS: Overall, participants appeared to understand the contribution of general risk factors (i.e., smoking) to disease development. However, participants were less knowledgeable about risk related to family health history. Of the 125 participants, sixty-nine percent (n=86) and eighty-five percent (n=107) overestimated the lifetime risks to develop colon cancer for women and men in the general population, respectively. Similar trends were observed for heart disease. More participants were accurate about their risk perceptions for colon cancer than for heart disease in both the pre- and post-family health history session. Among the participants whose perceptions changed, inaccurate perceptions for colon cancer and heart disease prior to the family health history interview were significantly more likely to become accurate for colon cancer (p=0.028) and heart disease (p=0.005).
CONCLUSIONS: The family health history is an effective tool in identifying at-risk individuals and promoting accurate risk perceptions. Encouraging the use of family health history and providing accurate risk perceptions can lead to healthy behavior modifications that may decrease racial and ethnic health disparities.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04042005-161808 |
| Date | 17 June 2005 |
| Creators | Murthy, Vinaya Sheila |
| Contributors | John W. Wilson, Elizabeth Gettig, MS, CGC, Robin E. Grubs, PhD, CGC, Stephen B. Thomas, PhD |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04042005-161808/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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