Reducing Disparities in Hypertension among African American Women through Understanding Information Seeking and Information Use.

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation project is to establish a foundation to develop interventions to reduce the health disparity in hypertension that disproportionally affects African American women: (a) explore the evidence on Internet health information seeking; (b) describe Internet behaviors and information behaviors in a sample of African American women; and (c) determine the ability of a conceptual model to explain the variance in information use in a sample of African American women.

Methods: The first set of data (literature review) was collected from 15 electronic databases. A total of 9 empirical studies were included in the review. The second set of data was collected from African American women attending a Midwestern church conference (n = 156). Frequencies, descriptives, and means were used to describe blood pressure, hypertension knowledge scores, and information seeking. Pearson r correlations were used to examine the relationships between information seeking and other information behaviors. Logistic regression was used to examine use of information take action to self-mange blood pressure.

Results: Manuscript 1 provides seven themes related to Internet health information seeking. Manuscript 2 shows that African American women could use enhanced hypertension education and the Internet could be a facilitator for nurse-patient interactions. Manuscript 3 displays findings that describe the ability conceptual model to explain information used to actively manage blood pressure in African American women. The conceptual model was a good fit to the data as correctly classified women who reported use of information to take action to self-manage blood pressure and those who did not among women at risk for hypertension. The conceptual model was not a good fit for women diagnosed with hypertension.

Conclusions: Using the Internet as a tool may be useful for African American women who are interested in self-managing their blood pressure. Women in the sample were using the Internet with frequency and could benefit from enhanced hypertension education. Social aspects of information seeking were identified in this sample; the women reported collaborative information seeking, incidental information acquisition, and information sharing. Information sharing was a significant, independent explanatory variable in the logistic regression models predicting information use.