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Opinion of Personal Health Influenced by Language Abilities of Hispanic Breast Cancer Survivors

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Lower personal perception of health linked to limited proficiency in English language

According to data presented at the Fifth American Association for Cancer Research Conference on The Science of Cancer Health Disparities, Hispanic breast cancer survivors who believed their English-language proficiency to be limited were less likely to rate their own health as good, very good, or excellent.

Researchers used a single-item question that asks people to rate their health on a scale of 1 to 5, with 1 being poor and 5 being excellent, in order to determine self-rated health.

Maria Garcia-Jimenez, a student at the University of California Berkeley/University of California San Francisco Joint Medical Program said, “Even though it is a single-item question, in large epidemiological studies of mostly non-Hispanic white participants, it has been shown to be highly predictive of morbidity and mortality in chronic disease.”

Garcia-Jimenez and colleagues performed a secondary analysis of data from a telephone survey of 330 breast cancer survivors who identified themselves as Hispanic. This analysis examined the association between various acculturation measures and self-rated health.

The women surveyed were an average age of 58.3 years, and nearly all of them had been diagnosed with breast cancer within the past 5 years. Approximately 40% of the women described themselves as speaking English not at all, poorly, or fairly well.

Of the women surveyed, about 25% self-rated their health as poor or fair. However, compared with women with limited English-language proficiency, those women who were proficient in English were more than twice as likely to rank their health as good, very good, or excellent.

Then researchers evaluated whether cancer self-efficacy diminished these findings. “We found that if women had greater cancer self-efficacy, the effect of language on self-rated health was eliminated,” Garcia-Jimenez said. “Regardless of their language ability, having a high cancer self-efficacy was associated with higher self-rated health.”

Source: AACR.