Internet and Computer Access and Use for Health Information in an Underserved Community
Section snippets
Study Design
We performed a cross-sectional study of African American caregivers who had brought a child to an urban pediatric community health center on one of the study days between March and August of 2003. Caregivers were eligible if they were at least 18 years of age and had self-identified as African American.
On 2 different days each week during the study interval, a trained research assistant in the waiting room of the health center approached all eligible caregivers. Those who were eligible and gave
RESULTS
We obtained 299 surveys from pediatric community health centers that serve predominantly African American patients. To make the sample more homogeneous, only African Americans (282 of 299, 94%) were included in the study. Furthermore, 22 (7%) respondents were excluded from analysis so as to include only those who had children in the home and who were parents, grandparents, guardians, or foster parents. We excluded those who answered that their relationship to the child was “other relative” or
DISCUSSION
Our results show that among African American caregivers (parents), those of lower income and lower education level are less likely to have home Internet access than are those of higher income and higher education level, even within a setting of a largely low-income urban population at a community health center. Despite these variations, more than 90% of caregivers agreed that there is useful information about health on the Internet.
The results pertaining to use by income and education level are
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Anita Chatterjee, Elva Anderson, William W. Lawrence Jr, Alan E. Simon, and the Children's Health Centers–Southeast staff for their assistance with the project. We thank Robert McCarter for his statistical expertise and assistance in revising the manuscript. We also wish to thank all participating families. Note: T.K. and K.L.P. have received funding from the National Library of Medicine to provide computer access for patients and their families.
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