Description/Overview: There is an increase in research aimed to promote health behavior change in ethnically diverse underserved populations in the United States and globally. Conducting research with diverse populations has many unique benefits, but also presents some challenges. These include ethical and methodological issues, and the need for adapting or developing instruments to accurately measure constructs across groups. Interventions must also be adapted for diverse groups in order to obtain relevant and effective outcomes. Furthermore, cultural considerations should be an integral part of communicating health messages to the targeted community. The purpose of this symposium is to provide strategies on how to leverage cultural knowledge, beliefs, and/or practice to facilitate the research process from development to implementation and dissemination. We will address methodological and practical issues in conducting research with underserved populations. Specifically, we will: 1) discuss ethical and methodological challenges and present solutions; 2) describe the challenges of instrument adaptation and address measurement equivalence; 3) describe methods of adapting interventions to minority and immigrant populations; and 4) examine how to leverage culture in communicating effective health messages. The implications for research include a variety of issues related to ethical challenges, instrumentation, data collection, intervention development, and dissemination. Research designs that leverage culture show great promise in promoting health behavior change in underserved populations.

Learner Objective #1: The learner will be able to identify ethical and methodological issues in conducting research with underserved populations.

Learner Objective #2: The learner will be able to describe methods on how to adapt instruments and interventions and health messages to diverse underserved populations.