Trial Information

The Role of Family History and Culture in Communal Coping Within Mexican-American Families

The current project aims to understand the mechanisms underlying communications about
familial risk for common, complex diseases and the development of strategies by Mexican
American families to address this risk. For the Mexican American community, the family
culture provides an important setting within which individuals will interpret their health
information, share health information, and formulate strategies to engage in health
promoting behaviors. This family culture can be defined by the family social structure, the
degree of acculturation represented by household members, as well as socio-economic factors.
Participants for the current project will be recruited from an ongoing population-based
cohort of Mexican American households initiated by the Department of Epidemiology at the
University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center (UTMDACC). At least three adults, two of
which are biological relatives, living within the same residence from 160 multigenerational
Mexican American households will participate in this study. Medical risk information
(feedback) will be provided to participants based upon family history information that they
provide about four complex diseases: diabetes, heart disease, breast cancer and colon
cancer. The feedback will be randomized in two ways varying who within the family is
provided the feedback (Receiver of the Feedback) and what information is provided (Content
of Feedback). The data will allow us to examine whether the family-centered feedback
approach (where all participating family members receive feedback), rather than the
individual-focused feedback approach (where only one participating family member receives
feedback), encourages communications regarding disease risk among family members. The
medical risk feedback will also be randomized as to whether they receive disease risk
information only (predisposing risk feedback) or disease risk information coupled with
personalized recommendations for behavior change to reduce risks (predisposing plus enabling
feedback). These data will allow us to examine the impact of the content of risk feedback
based on the CDC's family health history tool Family Healthware(Trademark) on beliefs
concerning the underlying causes and controllability of common diseases. Cross comparisons
between the data obtained from who receives the medical risk information and the content of
that information will help in understanding the role of beliefs about disease and
communication about family risk for disease in the development of shared perceptions of risk
and strategies to adopt health promoting behaviors within the family. The role of the
familial and cultural context in the communication and strategy development process will
also be investigated.