Session: Cultural Specificity and Designing Efficacious Interventions for Real World Contexts (Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting)

SESSION INTRODUCTION: The goal of this symposium session is to highlight examples of culturally specific components (e.g., theories of change, intervention program content, methods of delivery) from basic research and intervention development studies with implications for intervention efficacy among groups of people who have experienced persistent health inequalities and challenges in access to preventive interventions and health care. Unique to this proposal is our focus on the intersectionality of social identities and conditions in relation to health disparities—specifically, we aim to optimize prevention science through highlighting lessons learned from our work with Asian, Asian-American and Latino populations and with rural communities. As each person has numerous interwoven social identities, with certain identities gaining salience in response to specific contexts, we will consider the ways in which our work to ameliorate health disparities across diverse groups is influenced by the contexts in which we theorize, design and implement interventions. Our aim is to catalyze discussion of overlaps in health-promoting and health-corroding factors across populations and contexts, and to highlight specific ways prevention scientists can promote health equity through intervention.

The first paper, “Cultural specificity and the development of effective interventions for Latino immigrant families in Oregon,” highlights lessons learned from two Latino immigrant family health-promoting programs. The first involved families with preschool age children and the second included families with children aged 10-17 years old.

The second paper, “Cultural adaptations of psychotherapy: Therapists’ applications of conceptual models with Asians and Asian Americans” investigates Japanese and United States’ therapists’ cultural adaptation of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in their work with clients of Asian ancestry. Findings reveal similarities and differences in the application of CBT with implications for intervention.

The third paper, “Developing tailored, culturally sensitive interventions for health promotion in rural communities” describes insights from phase one of the development of a multi-level, community-partnered health promotion intervention program to increase access to healthy foods in rural communities in Oregon.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will make some summary statements and moderate a discussion between the presenters and the symposium attendees. It is expected that insights drawn from a diversity of a) approaches (e.g., mixed methods research, intervention design, testing and refinement of interventions), b) topics (e.g., Latino immigrant family health behaviors, adaptation of CBT with Asian and Asian-Americans, rural healthy food access) and c) groups of people will be appealing to the SPR Annual Meeting participants.