Tailored Approaches to Stroke Health Education

Overview

The overarching goal of the proposed intervention is to reduce stroke disparities by overcoming pre-hospital barriers related to emergency stroke treatment and facilitating the appropriate response to acute stroke using a novel culturally-tailored and sustainable approach developed by an experienced transdisciplinary team. Building on our previous work, in which the investigators have identified barriers to increasing stroke literacy and behavioral intent to call 911, the investigators will develop and evaluate the effectiveness of a novel, culturally tailored intervention using storytelling (narrative persuasion) in the form of two professionally produced 12-minute films (in English and Spanish), in minority populations in New York City (NYC). Behavioral intent to call 911 will be assessed immediately after viewing the film, 6 months later, and one year later.

Stroke is the leading cause of adult disability and costs U.S. taxpayers \>$60 billion annually. Interventions designed to educate patients to seek treatment sooner when a stroke occurs may increase low rates of treatment with thrombolysis (current rates 3% national average). Thrombolysis can increase the odds of minimal to zero disability from stroke if emergency medical system response times and in-hospital response times are optimized (maximum time from symptom onset to intravenous thrombolysis is 4.5 hours). Black and Hispanic Americans have higher stroke incidence compared to Whites and are less likely to receive thrombolysis for acute stroke. The latency to hospital arrival is largely dependent on patients' recognition of stroke symptoms, and immediate presentation to the emergency department. The investigators have found very low stroke literacy rates among Blacks and Hispanics compared to Whites, which may, in part, be responsible for disparities in acute stroke treatment.