Williams Juinell B, Johnson Angela J, Ruiz Michelle, Campbell Lisa C
South Central Mental Illness Research Education and Clinical Center, Michael E. DeBakey Veterans Affairs Medical Center, (MEDVAMC 152), 2002 Holcombe Blvd., Houston, TX 77030, United States of America; Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, Baylor College of Medicine, One Baylor Plaza, Houston, TX 77030, United States of America.
Department of Psychology, Rawl Building, E. 5(th) St., East Carolina University, Greenville, North Carolina 27858, United States of America.
Prev Med. 2024 Dec;189:108126. doi: 10.1016/j.ypmed.2024.108126. Epub 2024 Sep 2.
The researchers applied Lindsay-Dennis' Black Feminist-Womanist research paradigm to Andersen's Behavioral Model for Health Service Use to guide initial research about Black American women's preventive health behaviors.
This article highlights this application, using interpretive phenomenological analysis for qualitative questions assessing how 40 Black college women define health and their experiences in health care. This was part of a larger convergent parallel mixed-methods approach in a 2022 cross-sectional online survey.
Participants defined health as a concept involving health literacy, physical and mental health, and being free from health conditions or disease. Regarding health-related lived experiences, negative experiences were more frequently reported than positive experiences. However, many participants reported both positive and negative health care related experiences. Predisposing, enabling, and need factors were all present in qualitative responses.
This article highlights the fit of a Black Feminist-Womanist research paradigm to Andersen's model to better understand Black women's health experiences and illustrates ways that medical mistrust, health literacy, and past experiences with health care can influence health service use. Areas for future research on barriers and facilitators to preventive care and implications for reducing health disparities are also discussed.
