Leveraging information-rich focus groups to construct culturally tailored interventions to achieve health equity in the diagnosis and treatment of chronic disease among insured, low-wage workers in rural North Carolina

Aim 1. Using our established worksite-based screening protocol we will conduct structured focus groups to elicit patient-identified barriers and solutions for healthcare engagement. When led by trusted members of a community, focus groups offer an innovative approach to identifying explanations for behavior that would be missed by traditional quantitative methods. A minimum of five focus groups will be held during worksite-based health screening events at five different worksites to engage employees in identifying and characterizing what specific barriers exist in accessing the healthcare system and what incentives or programs would provide the motivation to visit a healthcare provider. Focus groups will be led by a licensed RN/Nurse Practitioner with ties to the local community who has experience with qualitative interviewing and conducting focus groups. Aim 2. Content and thematic analysis will be performed on the data collected during the focus groups to (1) identify the most frequently reported barriers preventing engagement with the healthcare system and (2) characterize the solutions that are most likely to have the highest impact on engagement to develop culturally tailored interventions to be implemented and validated in future pilot studies.

Scholars @ ECU