Ethnic Social Marketing for Elderly Minorities: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract

Social marketers are facing major challenges as the United State's aging population becomes increasingly ethnically diverse. Social marketers are interacting with more elderly immigrants, refugees, and multiethnic populations who hold varying world views and health practices. In the face of the dramatic demographic shift toward diversity, concurrent with major changes in healthcare and Medicare, social marketers need to design effective interventions to reduce racial/ethnic and educational/socioeconomic discrepancies in health. Social marketers are also faced with the cultural adaptation of emerging interactive health communication technologies for minority elders who have two major barriers to achieving this communication: low literacy levels and little access to new technologies. It is imperative that social marketers develop culturally competent skills to work with the unique needs of seniors from diverse cultural backgrounds by understanding their needs, beliefs, and behaviors. Culturally appropriate adaptations and extensive pretesting of health messages for literacy and cultural sensitivity will be essential.