Benton LD, Hodge N; Academy for Health Services Research and Health Policy. Meeting.
Abstr Acad Health Serv Res Health Policy Meet. 2001; 18: 166.
Stanford University Hospital and Clinics, 1900 Clinton Avenue, Suite 3, Alameda, CA 94501 Phone: (510) 521-5727, Fax: (510) 521-5727, E-mail: lisa_benton@hotmail.com
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE: Widely circulated women's magazines can focus directives for health issues such as breast cancer. Magazine web sites on the Internet offer familiarity, and can stimulate a woman's awareness and interaction with online health and medical information. Latina and Essence are premiere magazines catering to large audiences of Hispanic and African-American subscribers. This paper explores their unique value to print and online media for outreach for breast cancer prevention in these populations.STUDY DESIGN: Issues of Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA, published during 2000 were reviewed for articles pertaining to breast cancer and breast health. Popular women's magazines published during this same one-year period along with their corresponding Internet web site were searched for relevant breast and breast cancer information. A secondary search identified print articles offering guides for searching and discerning medical information on the web. Magazine articles were analyzed for content and availability of breast health information. Magazine web sites were reviewed and ranked as to ease of use and relevancy of health information sources, site links, and degree of interactive engagement for site users. A coding instrument and descriptive statistics characterized these findings.POPULATION STUDIED: Issues of Journal of American Medical Association, JAMA, published during 2000 were reviewed for articles pertaining to breast cancer and breast health. Popular women's magazines published during this same one-year period along with their corresponding Internet web site were searched for relevant breast and breast cancer information. A secondary search identified print articles offering guides for searching and discerning medical information on the web. Magazine articles were analyzed for content and availability of breast health information. Magazine web sites were reviewed and ranked as to ease of use and relevancy of health information sources, site links, and degree of interactive engagement for site users. A coding instrument and descriptive statistics characterized these findings.PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Glamour magazine printed health articles consistently, and more frequently highlighted specific women's health concerns as cover banners. While all three magazines included some basic information on the importance of early breast cancer detection through screening, and featured at least one personal interest story during the year, articles seldom discussed issues such treatment and research. Glamour published one article on surgical options for treatment and genetic testing. As preparation for searching the web sites for medical information, each magazine provided at least one print summary or instructional review article with suggested sites to visit, while Glamour dedicated four articles to searching and rating specific health-related topics on the internet. The web site for Glamour and Latina provided general breast cancer information, the capability to search its web site archives, the opportunity to email health and medical questions into an expert, as well as offering facile links to widely recognized breast cancer resources on the web. In contrast, the Essence magazine web site only offered users limited interaction.CONCLUSIONS: While all three women's magazines provided readers with a basic framework for using the Internet to retrieve medical and health-related information, the instruction was not consistent across sources. There was also noticeable variability in the scope of resources referred to for breast cancer awareness and eduction by women's magazines compared to information published in JAMA. These contrasts of coverage of current breast cancer information appeared further exaggerated since the topic was less widely covered by print articles in Latina and Essence magazines and on the Essence magazine web site.IMPLICATIONS FOR POLICY, DELIVERY, OR PRACTICE: In the age of increasing Internet use to locate medical and health information, magazine home pages and their recommended links to pertinent sites are growing portals for improving patient health awareness through an interactive media. Because popular women's magazines help create the perception of the appropriateness and necessity for breast health care, they can serve as a valuable resource to promote patient education among medically underserved and underrepresented populations. As more attention is paid to uses of emerging Internet technology for closing the disparity gap in health care, it is important to advocate for inclusion of reliable content to these magazine websites.PRIMARY FUNDING SOURCE: No outside funding was used to conduct this study
Publication Types:
Keywords:
- African Americans
- Breast Neoplasms
- Communications Media
- Electronic Mail
- Female
- Health Resources
- Humans
- Internet
- Mass Screening
- Patient Education as Topic
- Periodicals
- Publishing
- abnormalities
- hsrmtgs
Other ID:
UI: 102273490
From Meeting Abstracts