Session: Sociocultural Influences Underpinning Diabetes Risk and Prevention in Latinos: From Mixed Methods Integration to Intervention Design and Implementation (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

The design and implementation of prevention interventions to prevent or delay the onset of type 2 diabetes (T2D) in at-risk adults constitutes an important application of prevention science theory, methods and data analytic methodologies.  This approach includes use of mixed methods methodologies (Castro et al, 2014).  The proposed symposium will consist of three presentations on approaches for the prevention of T2D, highlighting the role of the mixed methods methodology for more probing analyses of the psychological and sociocultural aspects of T2D. Results of these analyses offer implications for the design of efficacious and culturally-sensitive prevention interventions. The first presentation, “Using Integrative Mixed Methods to Examine Type 2 Diabetes to Inform Prevention Interventions,” will introduce the benefits of utilizing the Integrative Mixed Methods (IMM) in diabetes research. The IMM affords a deep-structure and process-related analysis of qualitative case study interview data (Castro et al., 2010; Castro et al., 2014), which can be converted to numerical form, for further analyses using “mixed-methods regression model analyses.”  Subsequently, specific qualitative text narrative can be “recontextualized,” to create “storylines” that describe effects observable for extreme cases (high and low levels), as examined for thematic variables that were significant predictor variables in the mixed-methods regression model analyses.  The second presentation, “Sociocultural Influences on Perceived Risk in Latinos at Risk of Developing Type 2 Diabetes” will examine the results of a small study of at risk adult Latinos and Latinas sampled from the Maricopa County Diabetes Registry.  In depth interviews were conducted with these participants and then a thematic analysis of participant responses to focus questions were conducted for responses from two domains: (a) attributions of the perceived causes of diabetes, and (b) familial sources of social supports for dietary and exercise behavior change that is consistent with diabetes prevention. The third presentation, “Implementation of a Culturally-Grounded Diabetes Prevention Program for Obese Latino Adolescents” will describe the rationale, design, implementation, and will report preliminary results of a randomized, controlled diabetes prevention intervention for a high-risk group of Latino adolescents.  This lifestyle intervention uses an ecodevelopmental model to frame the use of sociocultural and community-level influences for T2D prevention.  The principal aim was to provide a structured intervention to promote positive changes in specific health behaviors to reduce diabetes risk factors.