Progress 11/05/14 to 09/30/15
Outputs
Target Audience:The specific target audiences reached in the efforts of this project over the reporting period may be divided into three groups. The first are the 255 randomly chosen respondents who participated in the interviews of the survey. Theyrepresenta representative randomsample of Tutuila Island householders inAmerican Samoa. The second group consists of the 45 students who were trained to conduct and participate as interviewers in the conduct of the survey. The third group are the four American Samoa Community College instructors of the Nursing Derpartment, the Health Science Department, the Social Science Department, and the Communicty and Natural Resources Divisionwith whom a partnership was formed to incorporate this project into their class curriculums.College students in these instructors classes received class credit to be trained toassist this project as interviewers for the household based survey. This training and experinece added an important educational value to this project, and also faciliated the project's ability to shift from a phone based survey to a more valuable face to face household to household survey. It may be noted that the primary target audience of this project will be the professional health care providers in American Samoa who may use the data from this study to help design effective health communication interventions to promote healther disease reducing behaviors in the population. This target audience will start being reached once the dissemination of the results from the project begins in the second year of the project. Changes/Problems:The biggest change in the project was a beneficial one - which was to change from doing the survey using telephone to doing the survey face to face at the site of each household. Doing it this way was seen as particularly better in American Samoa where residents generally value face to face communication much more then any other type, thus providing the opportunity for more accurate and thoughtful answers to the questions in the survey. It also provided the opportunity to gain additional visual understandings of the environments of every household, observations which could be noted. We were able to do the survey face to face through the use of training student teams to help conduct the survey (which has already been described in the section on "Training opportunities provided"). This change is not one of approach, but only methodology. Reaching the full target sample of 264 households was a challenge, but with 255 household interviews conducted, the study did come close the reaching this sample size. In more remote villages, we found that sometimes a number of the houses that were randomly selected were abandoned houses. The project experienced also some delays as it is concurrent with other projects, but given that all the data is collected, and results are almost completed, it is now to the stage of final analysis, conclusions and final write up, which can all be finalized wtihin the next reporting period. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?A beneficial addition to the original project was the training of American Samoan Community College students to assist the conduct of the survey as interviewers. For this purpose ASCC instructors were consulted in advance to incorporate both the training and the experienceof conducting the survey into the course syllabi resulting inthree 2 hour training sessions held for four ASCC courses in four differentASCC Departments and Divisions: Nursing, Health Science, Social Science, and Community and Natural Resources. Students were familiarized with the films series, The Weight of the Nation, with the problems of obesity in American Samoa, they were trained in the methods of doing the survey - using the research instruments, and each research team had to perform a mock up interview, including going through the consent process before going to the field.They were formed into teams of two to four students each to carry out the research under the supervision of the principal investigator. Most students noted that this was a very valuable experience for them from which they learned a lot. They also gained many insights about the American Samoan public and their attitudes about obesity, health and lifestyle. They gained skills as social science interviewers. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?
Nothing Reported
What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?The plan over the next reporting period is to diseminate the results of this project into the commujity and especially to the target audience of American Samoan health service providers,such as employees of American Samoa Department of Public Health, and others working on NCD prevention in American Samoa by promoting healthier lifestyles and choices in the population. This will be done through two methods - presentation of a powerpoint presentation multiple times to this target audience and the publication of a final report describing the project and its results. This publication will also generally promote an increased development of evidenced basedhealth communiations interventions and media campaigning in American Samoa together with evaluative systems that foster effective development of such programs. The other goal to accomplish over the next reporting period is the production of a manuscript for peer reviewed journal about this research.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
The collection of data on five areas of inquiry listed in the initiation proposal were accomplished. A six component of inquiry in the survey was added, which was self-reporting assessments by each resondent about their own level of health, and the healthfulness of their lifestyle, with specific sets of questions about their dietary habits and physical activity, and perceptions about challenges to practicing healthy behaviors in American Samoa. One important result found in the research was that television is an important channel for health communications in American Samoa, and KVZK-TV is a popular channel watched. However, broadcasting English language based program, such as The Weight of the Nation, even after we have broadcast rights to do so, on KVZK-TV is problematic, since this station must prioritize broadcast of Samoan or bi-lingual based programming. This channel is, however, essentially, the only public access television station in American Samoa. This means that more channels need to be opened up to use for health communication programming, and a variety of other effective and creatively produced televsion programming in health communications areas need to be produced in Samoan or bi-lingual to be shown on KVZK-TV.
Publications
|