Lessons Learned From an Outreach Program for Korean Immigrants

Background: In collaboration with other community organizations and a city hospital, our nursing association has been providing annual health fair to Korean immigrants in New York and New Jersey in the U.S. Koreans represent one of the largest Asian immigrant groups in these areas (United States Census Bureau, 2010). One of significant factors associating with their health service utilization was having health insurance (Kang, Kim, & Kim, 2016; Seo, Bae, & Dickerson, 2016). According to a study with middle-aged Korean immigrants, about 50% of them did not have insurance (De Gagne, Oh, So, & Kim, 2014). It is shown that Korean immigrants obtain health information from their social networks within Korean immigrant community (Choi, 2013; Oh & Jeong, 2017) and ethnic media (Islam et al., 2016). However, there is limited information on effective outreach strategies for Korean immigrants. In order to maximize our efforts to outreach Korean immigrants in need, we examined information sources as to how they heard about our programs and where they obtained general health related information.

Method: This study employed a cross-sectional, descriptive design. We developed a brief questionnaire about information sources regarding our community outreach programs and conducted the survey during our health fair in 2018. In addition, we collected information on gender, age, areas of residency, health information sources, major health concerns, and health information of interest. Descriptive statistics were used to summarize the data.

Results: In total, 164 Korean immigrants participated in our 2018 health fair and 141 (85.9%) completed the survey. About 61% was female (n=81) and 91% were from NY area (n=111). The average age was 55.9 years. The most frequently reported information source they learned about our health fair was Korean newspaper (n=92, 63%), followed by word-of-mouth (17.1%) and Korean radio (16.4%). Participants reported diabetes and eye problems as the most concerned health problems. Cancer, diabetes, and heart diseases were identified as top three topics of their interest.

Discussion and Conclusion: While American public increasingly search health information through online sources (LaValley, Kiviniemi, & Gage-Bouchard, 2017), our study showed that majority of Korean immigrant participants received health and health-related information via traditional media such as Korean newspapers, radio, and TV. This result is similar to a study with Asian Americans in New York city showing that Korean immigrants were more likely to utilize print media (e.g., newspapers) and age and limited English proficiency were significant predictors to their preference (Islam et al., 2016). Korean immigrants’ preferred choice to seek health information could be explained by multiple factors including acculturation, age, and socioeconomic status. According to a study with Hispanic immigrants, less or moderately acculturated groups sought health information in Spanish (Shin & Maupome, 2017) and in-person (Cristancho, Peters, & Garces, 2014). Our study did not collect information on their acculturation levels, but with limitations of this study, it will help to develop community outreach programs to Korean immigrants and to disseminate health information to minority population in need.