Hispanic Family Medical Information Telephone Helpline

Support is requested to develop and field test a culturally sensitive telephone helpline staffed bynurses to assist Hispanic patients and families make informed health care decisions. This helpline wservices: 1) providing advice for routine medical concerns: 2) assisting patients to understand theassociated with medical and surgical procedures; 3) providing callers with disease prevention and heinformation; and 4) providing health and medical background information through a library of prerecoIn Phase I we will hire nurses, form an advisory group, develop preliminary protocols, and conduct aservice. This will allow us to assess the feasibility of providing accurate medical and health inforcommon types of information requested, determine who is (and who is not) using the service, determinmessages between counselors, and develop a protocol and operations manual. In Phase II we will buildexpand the system to include more hours, cover a larger geographical area, test the potential for exEnglish speaking minority populations, and carry out a randomized survey of users to determine post-behavioral effects.