Online Program

279432
Systematic review of barber-administered health education and outreach programs in African American communities


Tuesday, November 5, 2013

John S. Luque, PhD, MPH, Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health, Georgia Southern University, Statesboro, GA
Levi Ross, PhD, MPH, Office of Cancer Health Disparities Research, Roswell Park Cancer Institute, Buffalo, NY
Clement K. Gwede, PhD, MPH, RN, Health Outcomes and Behavior, Moffitt Cancer Canter and Research Institute, Tampa, FL
Objective: The barbershop has been portrayed as a culturally appropriate venue for reaching African American men with health information and preventive health screenings to overcome institutional and socio-cultural barriers. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the peer-reviewed literature on barbershop-based health programs to provide lessons learned for researchers and practitioners. Method: A literature search was conducted to identify articles for the review. Inclusion criteria specified that studies had to be based in the U.S. and reported about research where barbers were either being assessed for the feasibility of their participation or recruited to administer health education/screening outreach or research activities. The literature search produced 901 bibliographic records, and after elimination of articles not meeting inclusion criteria, 35 articles remained for full-text review. The final article sample consisted of 16 articles for full abstraction. Results: All barbershop-based studies targeted African American men in urban settings. Common study types were cross-sectional studies, feasibility studies, needs assessment studies, and one-shot case studies. Barber-administered interventions addressed primarily prostate cancer and hypertension. Common roles for barbers included health education, screening, and referrals to healthcare. Non-intervention studies focused mostly on surveying or interviewing barbers for assessing feasibility of future intervention studies. Conclusion: Barbershops are a culturally-appropriate venue for disseminating print and media health education materials, as well as providing education and screening from trained barbers. In studies where barbers received training, their knowledge of various health conditions increased significantly, and they were also able to increase health knowledge and screening among their customers.

Learning Areas:

Implementation of health education strategies, interventions and programs

Learning Objectives:
Assess the effectiveness of barber-administered health education and outreach programs in African American communities Compare different approaches to delivering health education and screening interventions in the barbershop setting

Keyword(s): African American, Community-Based Health Promotion

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am currently and have been the principal investigator on multiple federally funded grants focusing on cancer education in African American and Latino communities. My current research focus is to develop community-based interventions to impact cancer disparities in high risk, medically underserved, or racial/ethnic minority populations.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.