American Sign Language-Accessible Diabetes Education
Condition: Diabetes; Deafness
MeSH terms: Deafness; Hearing Loss; Diabetes Mellitus
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      ASL-ADE will evaluate the efficacy of an ASL-interpreted diabetes educational intervention to
      the end of improving the health literacy of the target population and addressing their
      disparate health outcomes.
    

Detailed description: 
      Georgia Tech's Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP) proposes the American Sign
      Language Accessible Diabetes Education (ASL-ADE) project in response to the Georgia Center
      for Diabetes Translation Research for a pilot and feasibility study on "Type II translation
      research in diabetes care and prevention." ASL-ADE will conduct an efficacy study, in the
      Engagement and Behavior Change Core, with the long-term objective of improved health outcomes
      for individuals who are Deaf and primarily communicate using ASL. The project will
      demonstrate the need for diabetes educational materials to be accessible to people who are
      Deaf and rely on ASL for clear and effective communications. ASL is a distinct language used
      by individuals of the Deaf community and is grammatically dissimilar to English. Some people
      who are Deaf rely primarily on ASL and have limited English proficiency. , Other people who
      are deaf are comfortable with written English. Due to the language diversity within this
      community, diabetes health education materials are not always accessible. For example, there
      are low levels of general health literacy among people who are Deaf which increases risk for
      developing chronic illnesses, , , including diabetes. As such, people who are Deaf also have
      an increased risk for acute complications associated with diabetes. The low level of health
      literacy among the target population is directly related to communication/language barriers,
      as much of the health education outreach mechanisms are exclusionary because of their use of
      audio and print materials. The hearing population can benefit from incidental learning such
      as overhearing conversations and watching the news, even commercials. It is a form of
      socialization that is often taken for granted by people who can hear. To address this access
      gap, the goals of ASL-ADE are to provide accessible materials to improve health literacy and
      (1) impact awareness of risk factors, preventive measures, and diabetes symptoms, and (2)
      elicit the desired behavioral response to seek medical care and modify health-related
      behaviors. The proposed project will produce a video-based ASL interpreted diabetes
      educational intervention, and using a pretest-posttest (immediate) 30-day posttest
      quasi-experimental design, evaluate the effect of the educational intervention on knowledge
      about diabetes and related health behavior changes. Data will be analyzed along the
      dimensions of diagnosis status to measure if there is variance in scores for people who are
      Deaf with a diabetes diagnosis compared to their non-diagnosed counterparts; the a priori
      hypothesis being that given the communication barriers experienced by people who are Deaf,
      that no significant between-group differences will be found on pretest scores based on
      diagnosis status.

      This description is revised to exclude analysis along the dimensions of age because our
      sample did not contain enough subjects between the ages of 18-30 to run a comparison.
    

Intervention name(s): American Sign Language-Accessible Diabetes Education; Control Intervention
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Video-based ASL interpreted diabetes educational intervention (ASL-ADE), the content of which will be derived from diabetes health information regarding symptoms and risk factors that are published by the U.S. Centers for Diseases Control and Prevention (CDC) and the National Institute for Health (NIH) National Diabetes Education Program.; Non-health related video approximately the same length as ASL-ADE.
Other intervention name(s): ASL-ADE
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Factorial Assignment
Intervention model description: Quasi-experimental pre and post-test design. There will be one intervention group and one control group as detailed below:
The intervention group will take the pretest, view the video intervention, take the posttest, and at 30-days following take another posttest.
The control group will take the pretest and posttest, and at 30-days following take another posttest.
For those that are assigned to the control groups, at the completion of the study they will be offered the opportunity to view the ASL-ADE intervention.
The study model was revised to not use the Solomon-Four Group Design because the initial decision to use that design was to measure if there was a pre-test effect. There were no effects for the pre and post-test measures; therefore, we combined the arms into an intervention/no-intervention group, aligning with the primary outcome measures: (1) health literacy, and (2) related health behaviors. The original submission indicated a two-arm study, not a four-arm.
Masking: Single (Participant)
Primary purpose: Other
Keywords: Diabetes; Deafness