title: Afrocentric cultural values and beliefs: movement beyond the race and ethnicity proxy to understand views of diabetes.
abstract: The purpose of this study was to estimate the benefit of using a cultural characteristics scale to help diabetes educators understand how African Americans cope with diabetes. Illness representations are influenced by culture. Race and ethnicity as a proxy for culture provides an incomplete understanding of the mechanism by which cultural values influence representations of diabetes.
  
  
  
  A descriptive correlational design was employed by recruiting hospitalized adults with type 2 diabetes at 3 metropolitan northeast coast sites. The TRIOS Afrocentric cultural characteristics measure and the Illness perception Questionnaire were administered by paper-and-pencil to a diverse sample. Black race and African American ethnicity was used as a proxy for culture and compared to levels of agreement on an Afrocentric cultural scale to determine the relative ability to explain variance in illness representations of diabetes.
  
  
  
  The TRIOS measure adapted to diabetes care explained variance in illness representations of diabetes, while African American ethnicity/black race was not able to explain variance in illness representations. Clinicians would benefit from considering the degree to which a patient identifies with particular cultural characteristics when tailoring interventions to manipulate illness representations that are not concordant with biomedical representations.
authors.affiliation: Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Department of Medicine, New Jersey (Dr Scollan-Koliopoulos, Dr Bleich)
authors.forename: Melissa
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Scollan-Koliopoulos
authors.affiliation: UMDNJ-Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, New Brunswick, New Jersey (Mr Rapp)
authors.forename: Kenneth J
authors.initials: KJ
authors.lastname: Rapp
authors.affiliation: Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes, and Metabolism, Department of Medicine, UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School, Department of Medicine, New Jersey (Dr Scollan-Koliopoulos, Dr Bleich)
authors.forename: David
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Bleich
mesh_terms: D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D000328:Adult; D001741:Black or African American / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003431:Cross-Cultural Comparison; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D003466:Cultural Characteristics; D003920:Diabetes Mellitus / Q000097:blood / Q000188:drug therapy / Q000208:ethnology* / Q000523:psychology; D005260:Female; D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin / Q000378:metabolism; D015438:Health Behavior / Q000208:ethnology*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D010465:Perception; D011788:Quality of Life; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires
chemical_list: D006442:Glycated Hemoglobin; C517652:hemoglobin A1c protein, human