Topic Page for Cancer Screening
Mother and Daughter Chats May Save Lives
Teenage girls may be able to influence their mothers’ cancer screening behavior by serving as the messengers of the life-saving information. That’s the result of research conducted by Maghboeba Mosavel, PhD, at the Center for Reducing Health Disparities at MetroHealth Medical Center and Case Western Reserve University. Dr. Mosavel conducted her research over the past year through focus groups of African American and Hispanic female adolescents and their mothers, held in six low-income neighborhoods in Cleveland.
The focus groups, which utilized surveys and discussion, looked at the mother-daughter relationship, health care advice, and then specifically, advice on cervical cancer. “We took the traditional role parents have in teaching their children and shifted the paradigm to see if a daughter can become the teacher,” says Dr. Mosavel. “The study results show a lot of promise.”
The research shows there are two main reasons for this. In the lower-income neighborhoods, young women have better access to educational information than their mothers and can often better navigate systems of information. In addition, in 63% of the participating families, a single mother is the head of the household. In those homes, the mothers and daughters tended to be close in age and have a strong relationship where the mothers often turn to their daughters for advice, including health advice.
While there were differences in motivating factors between the African American and Hispanic focus groups, in both groups the key consideration is how the information would be shared between the daughters and mothers. “It is absolutely important that the girls need to deliver the health information in a culturally-appropriate way, being respectful of their mothers,” says Dr. Mosavel.
The study results are being presented in a “Research in Action” Day this Saturday, August 12, from 8:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. at the First United Methodist Church at 3000 Euclid Avenue in one of the neighborhoods where the study was conducted.
Send news items related to health disparities to ReduceDisparity(AT)case.edu
Posted by: David Porter on August 11, 2006
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Category: Cancer Screening; Daughters; Mothers; Research