Designing a Culturally Attuned Bilingual Educational Website for US Latino Dementia Caregivers

Abstract

Few consumer health websites target low-literate and/or non-English speaking patient populations, despite the fact that these populations are most vulnerable to poor health outcomes. Latinos providing care to a family member with Alzheimer’s disease and related dementias (ADRD) fall within this vulnerable population in that they face numerous language, literacy, and cultural barriers to accessing and using health and social services. As a result, Latino family caregivers tend to suffer greater morbidity due to stress burden than ADRD caregivers in Anglo American, English-speaking families. Moreover, distance and other convenience barriers prevent family caregivers across ethnic groups from utilizing health and support services. The internet represents a promising tool for eliminating barriers to education and service use among family caregivers. In particular, using the internet to reach Latino caregivers, who are most at-risk for stress-related morbidity, could represent a breakthrough means for reducing health disparities in this group. In this paper, we report our efforts to develop a “plain language” bilingual website to educate and support Latino family caregivers. We review our website design process, preliminary evaluation study findings, and future directions for web-based education for under-served Latino family caregivers.