Teaching Self-Management Skills to Deaf with Chronic Health Conditions

The Deaf have been shown to have low health literacy due to factors such as poor English reading skills, a lack of ASL signs for many common medical terms, and exclusion from public health education campaigns. Low health literacy leads to health disparities and difficulty communicating with healthcare providers even with interpreters present.

Havercamp et al. describe a pilot program that adapted Harvard University's Chronic Disease Self-Management Program (CDSMP) for a group of Deaf participants. 2 Deaf volunteers with chronic health conditions were recruited to translate the program into ASL and lead a series of 6 weekly sessions. These were designed to be highly interactive and focused on improving knowledge of common chronic health problems, self-efficacy and self-management  skills to maximize participant's functioning and ability to carry out normal daily activities. Some aspects of the program had to be modified to ensure that the participants could maintain their visual focus on the person signing. The 8 participants reported high satisfaction with the program, although this pilot study did not attempt to measure any improvements in their health literacy, self-efficacy or health.



Gated
Havercamp, S.M., Gjessing, R. & Smith, C.N.W. (2018). Chronic disease self-management program in American Sign Language: Evaluation and recommendations. Health Promot Pract, 1524839918792030.

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