Culturally-tailored interventions for chronic disease self-management among Chinese Americans: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

Objectives: Literature review evaluating the effectiveness and cultural surface and deep structures of interventions designed to improve Chinese Americans’ chronic disease self-management.

Method: PubMed, PsycINFO, CINAHL, and Health Source databases were searched for research conducted from 1990 to 2016 on self-management interventions for Chinese Americans with chronic disease.

Results: Ten articles comprised eight interventions, which each addressed a dimension of cultural surface structure, all providing linguistically appropriate messages delivered via bilingual staff. Five interventions also addressed cultural deep structure dimensions by providing culturally congruent counsellors or educators, or incorporating Chinese cultural values and social customs. Six interventions resulted in significant improvements in major outcome variables. Participants also reported high satisfaction and retention rates were high.

Conclusion: Culturally-tailored interventions that incorporate surface and deep structural elements of culture are sensitive and generally effective for Chinese Americans to improve access to health care, disease awareness, social environment, and participants’ ability to practice self-management skills.

KEYWORDS:

• Culturally-tailored
• Chinese Americans
• chronic disease
• self-management
• systematic review

Acknowledgements

The authors thank Dr. Sharon Brown for her feedback during the drafting of this manuscript. The authors disclosed no specific grant from any funding agency or organization.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.