Essential Qualitative Inquiry in the Development of a Cancer Literacy Measure for Immigrant Women.

In this article, we describe the development of a comprehensive measure of breast and cervical cancer literacy for immigrant populations. To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to use a health literacy framework in this endeavor. Using qualitative strategies, we (a) developed an understanding of the experiences of Mexican and Filipina immigrant women with low health literacy through individual interviews, (b) conducted focus groups to obtain feedback from experts and participants to determine the adequacy of items included in the measure, and (c) refined the set of items to create an empirically based measure.

Women's health and behavioral health issues in health care reform.

As health care reform promises to change the landscape of health care delivery, its potential impact on women's health looms large. Whereas health and mental health systems have historically been fragmented, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) mandates integrated health care as the strategy for reform. Current systems fragment women's health not only in their primary care, mental health, obstetrical, and gynecological needs, but also in their roles as the primary caregivers for parents, spouses, and children.

A culturally relevant conceptualization of depression: an empirical examination of the factorial structure of the Vietnamese Depression Scale.

Background: Despite the high risk of depression among Vietnamese refugees, there has been insufficient attention to the psychometric properties of the most utilized scale, the Vietnamese Depression Scale (VDS: Kinzie et al., 1982).

Aim: The primary aim of the study is to empirically derive the factorial structure of the VDS to support its use as a culturally responsive depression screening tool in community samples of Vietnamese adults.