It has been suggested that low health literacy is associated with adverse health outcomes, and reduced access to needed services. Latinos' health behaviors and attitudes are known to be influenced by social and cultural factors. The prevalence of low health literacy of recent Latino immigrants in the Washington D.C. area is unknown. Further, the impact of health literacy levels in the oral health knowledge, opinions, and practices among mostly underserved Latinos is unknown. The proposed investigation will concentrate in using focus group methodology to elicit information about beliefs, viewpoints, preferred terminology and to further detail and test survey instruments designed to assess the relationship between oral health knowledge and measures of health literacy and of social support, in members of an Inner City Hispanic Community in Mount Pleasant, Washington D.C. The instruments that will be assessed and further detailed include: A previously developed oral health knowledge and practices (KOP) survey instrument, developed in the Inner City Hispanic Community of Mount Pleasant in Washington D.C.; the SAHLSA instrument -a Spanish Health Literacy Assessment Tool, and a social support survey instrument, both previously tested and validated with patients at the University of North Carolina; and Health literacy measures using REALM (in English). The results of this qualitative investigation will help improve our understanding of the social, cultural and literacy factors at play in this community as it pertains to oral health practices and care seeking behaviors, and will assist in developing and pre-testing instruments designed to assess the association of oral health knowledge and measures of health literacy considering social and cultural factors in members of an Inner City Hispanic Community. Ultimately, these instruments will serve to target oral health promotion and primary prevention efforts for Latino populations. ? ? ?
