Abstract

Improving health self-efficacy at a community health fair in Lubbock, Texas

Taylor H. Lindgren MBA, Chelsea Burroughs, Mark Burroughs, George Parker MBA, Fatma Levent MD

ABSTRACT

To improve the health self-efficacy of the Lubbock, Texas community, Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine students organized a health fair to promote patient education and improve awareness of health issues, such as diabetes, heart health, hypertension, skin care, hypercholesterolemia, nutrition, stress management, cancer screening and recommendations, physical fitness, and mental health. An evaluation of 57 health fair participants’ self-reported self-efficacy on a scale from 0 to 10 before and after visiting the health fair revealed an average increase in self-efficacy of 0.87 (before: 7.96, after: 8.83, p<0.0001, std=1.78). Although the health fair was successful in marginally improving patient self-efficacy, patient education and overall community health can continue to be improved by expanding educational opportunities for health promotion and illness prevention, furthering overall access to care, and broadening the health fair’s target population.

Keywords: self-efficacy, health, fair, prevention, education, community, rural


Article citation: Lindgren TH, Burroughs C, Burroughs M, Parker G, Levent F. Improving health self-efficacy at a community health fair in Lubbock, Texas. The Southwest Respiratory and Critical Care Chronicles 2018; 6 (25):52–59
From: School of Medicine (THL, CB, MB, GP) and Department of Pediatrics (FL) at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, Lubbock, Texas
Submitted: 4/5/2018
Accepted: 6/15/208
Reviewer: Patti Patterson MD
Conflicts of interest: none
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License