Risk Communication Within Mexican-American Families

The current project aims to understand the mechanisms underlying communications about familial risk for common, complex diseases and the development of strategies by Mexican American families to address this risk. For the Mexican American community, the family culture provides an important setting within which individuals will interpret their health information, share health information, and formulate strategies to engage in health promoting behaviors. This family culture can be defined by the family social structure, the degree of acculturation represented by household members, as well as socio-economic factors. Participants for the current project will be recruited from an ongoing population-based cohort of Mexican American households initiated by the Department of Epidemiology at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (UTMDACC). At least three adults, two of which are biological relatives, living within the same residence from 160 multigenerational Mexican American households will participate in this study. Medical risk information (feedback) will be provided to participants based upon family history information that they provide about four complex diseases: diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and colon cancer. The feedback will be randomized in two ways varying who within the family is provided the feedback (Receiver of the Feedback) and what information is provided (Content of Feedback). The data will allow us to examine whether the family-centered feedback approach (where all participating family members receive feedback), rather than the individual-focused feedback approach (where only one participating family member receives feedback), encourages communications regarding disease risk among family members. The medical risk feedback will also be randomized as to whether they receive disease risk information only (predisposing risk feedback) or disease risk information coupled with personalized recommendations for behavior change to reduce risks (predisposing plus enabling feedback). These data will allow us to examine the impact of the content of risk feedback based on the CDC s family health history tool Family Healthware on beliefs concerning the underlying causes and controllability of common diseases. Cross comparisons between the data obtained from who receives the medical risk information and the content of that information will help in understanding the role of beliefs about disease and communication about family risk for disease in the development of shared perceptions of risk and strategies to adopt health promoting behaviors within the family. The role of the familial and cultural context in the communication and strategy development process will also be investigated.