Overcoming barriers to engaging socio-economically disadvantaged populations in CHD primary prevention: A qualitative study
METHODS: The primary prevention element of Have a Heart Paisley (HaHP) offered risk screening to all eligible individuals. The programme employed two approaches to engaging with the community: a) a social marketing campaign and b) a community development project adopting primarily face-to-face canvassing. Individuals living in areas of SED were under-recruited via the social marketing approach, but successfully recruited via face-to-face canvassing. This paper reports on focus group discussions with participants, exploring their perceptions about and experiences of both approaches.
RESULTS: Various reasons were identified for low uptake of risk screening amongst individuals living in areas of high SED in response to the social marketing campaign and a number of ways in which the face-to-face canvassing approach overcame these barriers were identified. These have been categorised into four main themes: (1) processes of engagement; (2) issues of understanding; (3) design of the screening service and (4) the priority accorded to screening. The most immediate barriers to recruitment were the invitation letter, which often failed to reach its target, and the general distrust of postal correspondence. In contrast, participants were positive about the face-to-face canvassing approach. Participants expressed a lack of knowledge and understanding about CHD and their risk of developing it and felt there was a lack of clarity in the information provided in the mailing in terms of the process and value of screening. In contrast, direct face-to-face contact meant that outreach workers could explain what to expect. Participants felt that the procedure for uptake of screening was demanding and inflexible, but that the drop-in sessions employed by the community development project had a major impact on recruitment and retention.
CONCLUSION: Socio-economically disadvantaged individuals can be hard-to-reach; engagement requires strategies tailored to the needs of the target population rather than a population-wide approach.
History
Publication title
BMC Public HealthVolume
10Article number
391Number
391Pagination
1-7ISSN
1471-2458Department/School
Tasmanian School of MedicinePublisher
Biomed Central LtdPlace of publication
Middlesex House, 34-42 Cleveland St, London, England, W1T 4LbRights statement
Licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0) http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/Repository Status
- Open