Older African American Men's Views, Beliefs, and Practices of Care and Health

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to discover, describe, and analyze older African American adult men's views, beliefs, and practices of care and health. The researchers contend that care influences the health of these men in profound ways, both within the conext of a senior community center and their community. The domain of inquiry was the older African American men's views, beliefs, and practices of care and health within the context of a senior community center in a U.S. Midwestern city. This domain is of interest to nursing because of the increased incidence of morbidity and mortality, as well as muluple health disparities within this population. There is clearly a lack of knowledge in the research literature regarding African American men and their views on their care and health. Most of the previous studies on this topic have used quantitative research designs and have focused on chronic disease processes from the health professional point of view. This study used a qualitative research approach and is focused on the care and health of African American elderly men from their point of view. <p>Madeleine Leininger's Culture Care Diversity and Universality theory and the ethnonurising method were selected as the frameowrk for the study, as together they offer a holistic approach. The environmental context of this study included the physical, social, and cultural environment of the senior community center. Leininger's ethnonursing research method, which includes prolonged observation-participation-reflection and informant interviewing was used to discover patterns and themes about health, care, and health care decision making. The goal of the study was to understand generic, folk (emic) and professional care (etic) factors that promote health and healthy lifeways of older African American men and to explore ways to use both types of care to provide culturally congruent and competent care. <p>Four major themes discovered were: (1) Older African American men viewed, expressed, and lived generic care to maintain their pre-retirement folk and beneficial lifeways and to maintain their health; (2) Older African American men shared a view of good health that included being able to take care of oneself, to have the ability to perform daily activities without pain, to live a long life, and to be healthy despite chronic disease; (3) Older African American men expressed noncare as distrusting the health care system and being selective about professional health care practices; (4) Older African American men expressed a preference for selected professional care and cure practices that would be culturally congruent with their lifeways and assist in promotion of healthy lifeways.