Abstract
Chinese American pregnant women and women of childbearing age face economic, cultural and linguistic barriers in accessing mainstream health care services. The Charles B. Wang Community Health Center developed a culturally and linguistically competent genetic education workshop for high-risk Chinese American prenatal patients. Patients referred for genetic counseling for thalassemia, abnormal triple screen results, and/or advanced maternal age were recruited to participate in the workshop. The workshop provided basic “genetic 101” education, focusing on topics that were directly relevant to the patients’ reasons for referral. The effectiveness of the workshop was measured using a quasi-experimental design with pre-post surveys administered to intervention and control group participants. The evaluation also included a genetic counselor assessment and a pilot study of genetic counseling appointment length. Overall, workshop participants showed significant increases in knowledge, positive attitude and self-efficacy regarding genetic services as compared to their control group counterparts. The pilot appointment length study data revealed that the workshop reduced the length of the genetic counseling appointment time by 40%. These positive findings suggest that it would be worthwhile to replicate the genetic education workshop at other health agencies serving Chinese-speaking populations and that further evaluation research should be conducted.
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Notes
The other CGEN sites were the Dominican Women’s Development Center in New York City, the Genetic Science Learning Center (GSLC) at the University of Utah, in partnership with the Utah Department of Health Chronic Disease Genomics Program; and National Human Genome Center and Department of Community and Family Medicine at Howard University.
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Acknowledgement
This project was supported by grant 2-U33MC00157-06 from the Health Resources and Services Administration, Maternal and Child Health Bureau, Genetic Services Branch to the March of Dimes Foundation. The authors would like to acknowledge the assistance of Diane Ashton and Diane Gross of March of Dimes, Julie Solomon of Julie Solomon Consulting, LLC, Penny Kyler of HRSA and Ann Carlson of New York Presbyterian Hospital –Weill Cornell Medical Center. We would also like to thank the support offered by Perry Pong, Regina Lee, Deborah Hong, Jolene Chou, Sandra Tanamugsukbovon, Lisa Ho, Shalini Vora, the Women’s Health Department and the Women’s Health Community Advisory Board at the Charles B. Wang Community Health Center.
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Sim, SC., Zhou, X.D., Hom, L.D. et al. Effectiveness of Pre-counseling Genetic Education Workshops at a Large Urban Community Health Center Serving Low-Income Chinese American Women. J Genet Counsel 20, 593–608 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-011-9397-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10897-011-9397-2