American Sign Language-Accessible Diabetes Education

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.