Exploring African Americans’ perceptions of electronic personal health records

Abstract

Statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show that African Americans experience a higher death rate due to chronic diseases compared with White Americans. The purpose of this qualitative, exploratory, single-case study was to explore how African Americans perceive electronic personal health records (ePHRs) and thereby improve the ePHR adoption rate. Fifteen participants were selected for this study through purposive criterion and snowball sampling. Semi-structured interviews were used to collect data from two groups of participants. The first group comprised people who worked in the healthcare industry, and the second, people who worked outside the healthcare industry. NVivo 12 Plus was used to analyse the data and formulate the themes for this study. A majority of the participants were concerned about the security of ePHRs. Participants indicated that ease of use was important. Finally, some participants believed that they did not need to use ePHRs. The study may help healthcare management professionals address the problem of low ePHR adoption rates among African Americans in the United States and improve the security of ePHRs.