ABSTRACT

In this paper, we describe our approach to individualizing messages to promote the health of middle-aged and older heterosexual, cisgender African American men. After arguing the importance of being population specific, we describe the process we use to increase the salience of health messages for this population by operationalizing the identity concepts of centrality and contextualization. We also present a measure of African American manhood and discuss how manhood is congruent with qualitative research that describes how African American men view their values, identities, goals, and aspirations in ways that can be utilized to create more meaningful and impactful messages to promote and maintain health behaviors. Our tailoring strategy uses an intersectional approach that considers how the centrality of racial identity and manhood and the salience of religiosity, spirituality, and role strains may help to increase the impact of health messages. We highlight the need to consider how the context of health behavior and the meaning ascribed to certain behaviors are gendered, not only from a man’s perspective, but also how his social networks, behavioral context, and the dynamic sociopolitical climate may consider gendered ideals in ways that shape behavior. We close by discussing the need to apply this approach to other populations of men, women, and those who are non-gender binary because this strategy builds from the population of interest and incorporates factors that they deem central and salient to their identities and behaviors. These factors are important to consider in interventions using health messages to pursue health equity.

摘要

在本文中，我们描述了我们通过个性化信息来促进中老年异性恋、顺性别非洲裔美国男性健康的方法。在论证了针对特定人群的重要性之后，我们描述了通过实施中心性和情境化的身份概念来提高针对该人群的健康信息的显着性的过程。我们还提出了非裔美国人男子气概的衡量标准，并讨论了男子气概如何与定性研究相一致，定性研究描述了非裔美国男性如何看待自己的价值观、身份、目标和愿望，这些方式可用于创造更有意义和有影响力的信息，以促进和保持健康行为。我们的定制策略采用交叉方法，考虑种族身份和男子气概的中心地位以及宗教信仰、灵性和角色压力的显着性如何有助于增加健康信息的影响力。我们强调需要考虑健康行为的背景和某些行为的意义如何被性别化，不仅从男性的角度，而且从他的社交网络、行为背景和动态的社会政治氛围如何以某种方式考虑性别理想塑造行为。最后，我们讨论了将这种方法应用于其他男性、女性和非性别二元群体的必要性，因为这种策略基于感兴趣的人群，并纳入了他们认为对其身份和行为至关重要和显着的因素。在利用健康信息进行干预以追求健康公平时，需要考虑这些因素很重要。