The purpose of this proposal is to obtain contextual data prior to planning for community-based (CB) interventions in the Philippines aimed at informing people about causes and preventing orofacial clefting. In the Philippines, 1/500 live born children will have a cleft lip with or without a cleft palate. Here there is a high prevalence of clefting and treatment is limited or unavailable. Anthropological reports describe Asian beliefs about the cause of illness as supernatural. If Filipinos hold this belief then interventions inconsistent with their understanding of cause and prevention may not be accepted. Therefore, an ethnographic study is warranted to describe attitudes and beliefs regarding the cause, prevention and treatment of clefting. Using an explanatory models framework, qualitative methods will be used to describe current beliefs about the causes, prevention and treatment of orofacial clefting, and willingness to participate in prevention trials of orofacial clefts among Filipinos and health care workers. In-depth interviews will be conducted with people who have a cleft or child with cleft, people who neither have cleft or children with cleft, and Filipino health workers. Interviews will be coded for broad categories. More specific descriptive sub-codes will be assigned to the data grouped under the broad categories. Data will be analyzed for regularities in terms of themes or concepts within each group and across the three groups.
| Daack-Hirsch, Sandra; Gamboa, Henrietta (2012) Working-class Filipino women's perspectives on factors that facilitate or hinder prenatal micronutrients supplementation to prevent congenital anomalies. Asia Pac J Public Health 24:1023-35 |
| Daack-Hirsch, Sandra; Gamboa, Henrietta (2010) Filipino explanatory models of cleft lip with or without cleft palate. Cleft Palate Craniofac J 47:122-33 |
