Re-designing patient education for immigrant women

Our current ANS featured article addresses the challenges of individualizing care for people whose social context differs from the white middle-class context on which much of nursing health care is based.  The article is titled “Promoting Immigrant Women’s Cardiovascular Health: Redesigning Patient Education Interventions,” authored by Suzanne Fredericks, PhD, RN and Sepali Guruge, PhD, RN.  Their work uses the social determinants of health framework to identify specific strategies for the needs of different populations.  You can download the article at no cost while it is featured on the ANS web site!  Then return here to engage in discussion with the authors!

Here is an abstract of the article:

Cardiovascular disease is the most common cause of death among women from low- to middle-income countries. A frequent cardiovascular nursing intervention is that of patient education. However, the applicability of this intervention is questionable, as these educational initiatives are typically designed and evaluated using samples of “white” homogeneous males. Using the social determinants of health framework, the discursive article titled: Promoting Immigrant Women’s Cardiovascular Health: Redesigning Patient Education Interventions identifies specific strategies for redesigning existing cardiovascular education interventions to enhance their applicability to immigrant women. 

Dr. Fredericks has provided this video that gives an overview of her research program: