Abraham Olufunmilola, Agoke Adeola, Sanuth Kazeem, Fapohunda Abimbola, Ogunsanya Motolani, Piper Megan, Trentham-Dietz Amy
Social and Administrative Sciences Division, School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
African Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI, United States.
JMIR Cancer. 2024 Mar 6;10:e53956. doi: 10.2196/53956.
Cancer prevalence data for Black Americans is monolithic and fails to consider the diverse cultures and backgrounds within that community. For instance, African immigrants constitute a meaningful proportion of the foreign-born Black immigrants in the United States (42%), but the prevalence of cancer in the African immigrant community itself is unknown. Therefore, without accurate cancer prevalence data, it is impossible to identify trends and other key factors that are needed to support the health of African immigrants and their children. Moreover, it is impossible to understand how the culture and language of subgroups influence their cancer-related health behavior. While research in this area is limited, the existing literature articulates the need for culturally responsive and culturally tailored cancer education for African immigrants and their adolescent children, which is what we advocate for in this viewpoint paper. Existing projects demonstrate the feasibility of culturally responsive programming for adults; however, few projects include or focus on adolescents or children born to African immigrants. To best meet the needs of this understudied community, researchers must use culturally competent interventions alongside familiar, usable media. For adolescents, technology is ubiquitous thus, the creation of a culturally tailored digital intervention has immense potential to improve cancer awareness and prevention for youth and their community. More research is needed to address many of the existing research gaps and develop a rich understanding of the unique experience of cancer among African immigrant families that can be used to inform intervention development. Through this viewpoint, we review the current state of cancer-related research among African immigrant families in the United States. In this paper, we acknowledge the current knowledge gaps and issues surrounding measurement and then discuss the factors relevant to designing an educational intervention targeted at African immigrants and the role of African immigrant youth.
美国黑人的癌症患病率数据是单一的，没有考虑到该群体内部多样的文化和背景。例如，非洲移民在美国出生的外国黑人移民中占相当比例（42%），但非洲移民群体自身的癌症患病率尚不清楚。因此，没有准确的癌症患病率数据，就无法确定支持非洲移民及其子女健康所需的趋势和其他关键因素。此外，也无法了解亚群体的文化和语言如何影响他们与癌症相关的健康行为。虽然这一领域的研究有限，但现有文献明确指出需要为非洲移民及其青少年子女提供具有文化适应性和针对性的癌症教育，这正是我们在这篇观点论文中所倡导的。现有项目证明了针对成年人开展具有文化适应性项目的可行性；然而，很少有项目纳入或关注非洲移民的青少年或子女。为了最好地满足这个研究不足的群体的需求，研究人员必须使用具有文化能力的干预措施以及熟悉、易用的媒体。对于青少年来说，技术无处不在，因此，创建一个具有文化针对性的数字干预措施对于提高青少年及其社区的癌症意识和预防具有巨大潜力。需要更多的研究来填补许多现有的研究空白，并深入了解非洲移民家庭中独特的癌症经历，以便为干预措施的制定提供参考。通过这个观点，我们回顾了美国非洲移民家庭中与癌症相关的研究现状。在本文中，我们承认当前围绕测量存在的知识空白和问题，然后讨论与设计针对非洲移民的教育干预措施相关的因素以及非洲移民青年的作用。
