Poster Presentation

Monday, November 5, 2007
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Monday, November 5, 2007
1:30 PM - 2:45 PM
This presentation is part of : Scientific Posters
Health Belief Model Perceptions, Knowledge of Heart Disease, and its Risk Factors in Educated African-American Women: An Exploration of the Relationships of Socioeconomic Status and Age
Deborah E. Jones, RN, PhD, Dept. Organizational Health Systems and Adult Health, University of Maryland School of Nursing, Baltimore, MD, USA, Michael Weaver, RN, PhD, School of Nursing, The University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA, Susan J. Appel, APRN, BC, PhD, Graduate Department of the School of Nursing, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA, Diane Grimley, PhD, Department of Health Behavior, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA, and Jamy Ard, MD, Division of Clinical Nutrition & Dietetics, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA.
Learning Objective #1: "The learner will be able to recognize Health Belief Model (HBM) Perceptions and how they can be affected by socioeconomic status (SES), age and knowledge."
Learning Objective #2: "The learner will be able to identify associations between HBM constructs and SES, age and knowledge."
Problem:  Heart disease is the leading cause of death for African-American women in the United States. Even though African-American women experience higher rates of heart disease with earlier onset and more severe consequences than White women do, they are not aware of their risk for the disease.  The Health Belief Model (HBM) has been commonly used to guide preventive interventions in cardiovascular health.  However, the HBM has not been evaluated for African-American women regarding its effectiveness.

Objective: This study explored the perceptions of susceptibility and seriousness of heart disease, and the relationships between socioeconomic status (SES), age, and knowledge of heart disease and its risk factors.

Design: Cross sectional survey

Population, Sample, Setting:  Educated African-American women (n=194) from the southern United States. 

Variables:  Perceptions of susceptibility and seriousness of heart disease, SES, age, knowledge of heart disease and its risk factors, education.

Results:  The median age range was 45-54. Subjects were likely to be married (60.8%), have a graduate or professional education (60%), and have an income range of $50,000 - $74,999 (44.3%) and 1-3 persons in their family household (87.1%).   Median perceived susceptibility to heart disease was 3.  Median for seriousness was 4, which indicates that at least half of the participants had no opinion or was uncertain and half strongly agreed that heart disease is serious; in fact, 66.7% either agreed or strongly agreed that heart disease is serious, and only 13.5% disagreed or strongly disagreed that it is serious.  The median score on the heart disease knowledge test was 11.  

Conclusion: Study findings demonstrated no relationship between perceived susceptibility or perceived seriousness and the independent variables (SES, age, and knowledge) in African American women.  Older African American women with higher SES perceived that they had higher susceptibility to heart disease and had higher perceptions of the seriousness of heart disease.
  

See more of Scientific Posters
See more of The 39th Biennial Convention (November 3 -- 7, 2007)