Evidential preferences: cultural appropriateness strategies in health communications

While there is widespread agreement that com-munication programs and materials will be more effective when they are ‘culturally appro-priate ’ for the populations they serve, little is known about how best to achieve this cultural appropriateness. The specific strategies used to realize the potential of culturally appropriate communication take many forms. This paper discusses an approach to assessing and under-standing the presentation of statistical informa-tion (an evidential strategy) to enhance the perceived relevance of communications tar-geted to older African American men and women. Formative research on African Ameri-cans ’ attitudes and knowledge of colorectal can-cer explored preferences for presentation of statistical data. Focus group interviews elicited participants ’ (n 5 49) thoughts and attitudes on and anticipated behavioral response to five strategies for presenting cancer data and evi-dence—general, race specific, disparity, social math and framing;5-year probability of death or survival. A description is provided of the ap-plication of this approach to the development of a colorectal cancer campaign for African Amer-icans. This strategy may prove useful in under-standing and structuring the presentation of targeted cancer evidence that could result in more effective health communication