ABSTRACT

The medical literature emphasizes the increasing role of cultural c onsiderations for improved health education among Latinos. Research in Latino culture reveals the inherent function of figurative language devices, such as dichos, in individual expression and cultural norm transmission. Increased understanding of dichos may provide unique insight into the dynamic relationship between collective cultural knowledge and individual health perceptions. Dichos related to health and diabetes among Latinos, however, remain entirely unexplored. The present study represents a secondary qualitative analysis of the perspectives on diabetes and health of Mexican-origin males that identified inadequate understanding of disease processes and cultural customs as barriers to health. Spanish language transcriptions from the original study were content analyzed by two Latino researchers fluent in English and Spanish to identify the use of dichos by the participants to convey their perspectives on health and diabetes. The results reveal four major categorizations of dichos: religiosity, familism, formation, and individuality. Findings from this study provide insight on the utility of dichos for the identification of health-related perspectives. Dichos may also serve clinicians and health educators as culturally relevant vehicles of communication for encouraging and transformative health discussions. Future diabetes interventions should incorporate dichos to explore quantifiable outcomes of culturally tailored programs.

摘要

医学文献强调文化因素对于改善拉丁裔健康教育的作用越来越大。对拉丁文化的研究揭示了比喻语言手段（例如dichos）在个人表达和文化规范传播中的固有功能。增加对二氯甲烷的了解可能会为集体文化知识与个人健康观念之间的动态关系提供独特的见解。迪科斯然而，拉丁美洲人与健康和糖尿病相关的问题仍然完全未被探索。本研究对墨西哥裔男性糖尿病和健康的观点进行了二次定性分析，发现对疾病过程和文化习俗的了解不足是健康的障碍。两名精通英语和西班牙语的拉丁裔研究人员对原始研究中的西班牙语转录内容进行了分析，以确定参与者使用dichos来表达他们对健康和糖尿病的看法。结果揭示了二分的四个主要类别：宗教、家庭主义、形成和个性。这项研究的结果提供了对dichos效用的见解以确定与健康相关的观点。Dichos还可以为临床医生和健康教育者提供服务，作为文化相关的沟通工具，以鼓励和变革性的健康讨论。未来的糖尿病干预措施应结合迪科斯来探索文化定制计划的可量化结果。