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(Stroke. 2008;39:2189.)
© 2008 American Heart Association, Inc.

Editorial

Community Outreach for Stroke Education

Corinne Hodgson, MA, MSc

From CSH Associates Inc, Burlington, Ontario, Canada.

Correspondence to Corinne Hodgson, MA, MSc, CSH Associates Inc, 378 Melores Drive, Burlington, ON, Canada L7L 4T8. E-mail Corinne@cshassociates.com

Key Words: Psych & Behavior • health promotion • public education • warning signs

An extract of the first 250 words of the full text is provided, because this article has no abstract.

See related article, pages 2331–2335.

Educating the public on the warning signs of stroke is considered a critical part of the chain of survival and of better stroke care.¹ Repeated studies have demonstrated that high-risk groups, such as the elderly, minority groups, or those of low socioeconomic status, often have the poorest knowledge of stroke warning signs.^2–4 Although mass media can be a powerful tool in stroke public education,⁵ it is not without its limitations. To be effective, mass media needs adequate reach and frequency to break through the advertising "clutter"—which requires significant and sustained funding. Moreover, the ability of mass media to target specific high-risk subgroups, whether ethnic, socioeconomic, or linguistic, is unclear.

In this issue of Stroke, Kleindorfer et al⁶ describe a community-based project in which beauticians were used to deliver stroke education to black women, a group at increased risk of stroke. Community settings, such as churches, barber shops, and beauty salons, have been used to deliver a variety of health promotion programs in the United States, particularly among black and Latino populations.^7–11 Thus, although the Beauty Shop Stroke Education Project (BSSEP) may be unique to the field of stroke prevention, it is rooted in a growing discipline of community-based, participatory health promotion and research.

Like many community-based projects, the BSSEP is rooted in the Health Belief Model (HBM), one of the most widely used conceptual frameworks in health promotion and health behavior research. The HBM focuses in large part on people’s perceptions, such as . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Related Article:

The Challenges of Community-Based Research: The Beauty Shop Stroke Education Project

Dawn Kleindorfer, Rosie Miller, Sharion Sailor-Smith, Charles J. Moomaw, Jane Khoury, and Michael Frankel
Stroke 2008 39: 2331-2335. [Abstract] [Full Text] [PDF]