Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Formative Research

Date Submitted: Sep 12, 2023
Date Accepted: Mar 14, 2024

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Characterizing Technology Use and Preferences for Health Communication in South Asian Immigrants With Prediabetes or Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

Hu L, Wyatt LC, Mohsin F, Lim S, Zanowiak J, Mammen S, Hussain S, Ali SH, Onakomaiya D, Belli H, Aifah A, Islam NS

Characterizing Technology Use and Preferences for Health Communication in South Asian Immigrants With Prediabetes or Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

JMIR Form Res 2024;8:e52687

DOI: 10.2196/52687

PMID: 38669062

PMCID: 11087851

Warning: This is an author submission that is not peer-reviewed or edited. Preprints - unless they show as "accepted" - should not be relied on to guide clinical practice or health-related behavior and should not be reported in news media as established information.

Characterizing technology use and preferences for health communication in South Asian immigrants with prediabetes or diabetes

  • Lu Hu; 
  • Laura C Wyatt; 
  • Farhan Mohsin; 
  • Sahnah Lim; 
  • Jennifer Zanowiak; 
  • Shinu Mammen; 
  • Sarah Hussain; 
  • Shahmir H Ali; 
  • Deborah Onakomaiya; 
  • Hayley Belli; 
  • Angela Aifah; 
  • Nadia S. Islam

ABSTRACT

Background:

Type 2 diabetes (T2D) disproportionately affects South Asian subgroups. Lifestyle prevention programs help prevent and manage diabetes, however there is a need to tailor these programs for mobile health (mHealth).

Objective:

This study examined We used baseline data from two clinical trials among South Asian immigrants in New York City (NYC), one focused on diabetes prevention and one focused on diabetes management. Descriptive statistics examined overall and sex stratified socio-demographics and technology use. Overall logistic regression examined three outcomes: preference for diabetes information by text message, online (videos, voice notes, or forums), and no interest/skipped response.technology use and among South Asian immigrants with diabetes or at-risk for diabetes.

Methods:

We used baseline data from two clinical trials among South Asian immigrants in New York City (NYC), one focused on diabetes prevention and one focused on diabetes management. Descriptive statistics examined overall and sex stratified socio-demographics and technology use. Overall logistic regression examined three outcomes: preference for diabetes information by text message, online (videos, voice notes, or forums), and no interest/skipped response.

Results:

The overall sample (N=816) had a mean age of 51.8 years (SD=11.0) and was mostly female (56.6%), married (93.3%), with less than a high school education (58.8%), and limited English proficiency (LEP, 90.7%). Most had a smartphone (75.3%) and reported interest in receiving diabetes information via text messages (74.6%). Females were significantly less likely to own smart devices or use social media applications compared to males. Factors significantly associated with an interest in receiving diabetes information via text messaging included male sex, current unemployment, greater than a high school education, and owning a smart device. Factors significantly associated with an interest in receiving diabetes information through videos, voice notes, or online forums included male sex and ownership of a smart device. Factors significantly associated with no interest/skipping the question about receiving diabetes information included female sex, a high school education or less, not being married, current employment, and not owning a smart device.

Conclusions:

Technology ownership, access, and social media usage were moderately high in primarily low-income South Asians in NYC with prediabetes or diabetes. Sex, education, marital status, and employment were associated with interest in mobile health interventions. Future studies may need to provide additional support to South Asian women when designing and developing mobile health interventions. Clinical Trial: Clinical Trials.gov NCT03333044 and NCT03188094; https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03333044 and https://classic.clinicaltrials.gov/ct2/show/NCT03188094


 Citation

Please cite as:

Hu L, Wyatt LC, Mohsin F, Lim S, Zanowiak J, Mammen S, Hussain S, Ali SH, Onakomaiya D, Belli H, Aifah A, Islam NS

Characterizing Technology Use and Preferences for Health Communication in South Asian Immigrants With Prediabetes or Diabetes: Cross-Sectional Descriptive Study

JMIR Form Res 2024;8:e52687

DOI: 10.2196/52687

PMID: 38669062

PMCID: 11087851

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.