Although the completion of the Human Genome Project helps develop efficient
treatment/prevention programs, it will raise new and non-trivial public health issues.
Many of these issues fall under the professional purview of health educators. Yet, no
studies have evaluated if health educators (HEs) are ready to adopt genomic
competencies into health promotion. This dissertation addresses this issue by examining
three research questions in three separate studies: 1) Why must HEs develop genomic
competencies? 2) What are HEs’ knowledge of, and attitudes toward genomic
competencies? And 3) what is HEs’ likelihood of adopting genomic competencies into
health promotion?
The first theoretical study proposed five arguments supporting the need for HEs to
develop their genomic competencies and integrate public health genomics into health
promotion. These arguments touched on various dimensions of HEs’ professional goals
and ranged from professional responsibilities and competencies, to the availability of
funding for genomic-related research or interventions and opportunities for future
employment. For the second study, a web-based survey was developed and distributed to all
members of four major health education organizations. A total of 1,925 HEs’ completed
the survey and 1,607 responses were utilized in the final analysis. This study indicated
that participants had deficient knowledge and unfavorable attitudes toward the CDCproposed
genomic competencies.
In the third study, a theoretical model was developed to predict HEs’ likelihood to
incorporate genomic competencies into their practice. Using techniques from Structural
Equation Modeling (SEM), the model was tested with the same data of the second study.
Findings supported the proposed theoretical model. While genomic knowledge,
attitudes, and self-efficacy were significantly associated with HEs’ likelihood to
incorporate genomic competencies into their practice, attitudes was the strongest
predictor of likelihood.
In summary, these studies indicated that participating HEs had deficient genomic
knowledge, unfavorable attitudes toward a set of CDC-proposed genomic competencies,
and low likelihood to adopt genomic competencies into health promotion. Relevant
training should be developed and advocated. As the SEM analysis results indicated the
survey findings supported the proposed theoretical model, which can be utilized to steer
future training for HEs.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:tamu.edu/oai:repository.tamu.edu:1969.1/ETD-TAMU-1323 |
| Date | 15 May 2009 |
| Creators | Chen, Lei-Shih |
| Contributors | Goodson, Patricia |
| Source Sets | Texas A and M University |
| Language | en_US |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Book, Thesis, Electronic Dissertation, text |
| Format | electronic, application/pdf, born digital |
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