Older Latinos' Attitudes Toward and Comfort with End-Of-Life Planning (Report‪)‬

Advance planning provides individuals with the opportunity to discuss and plan for their own health care decisions in the event that they become seriously ill and need someone else to speak for them. The importance of providing individuals with information about end-of-life care and decision making has been documented in the literature (Gutheil & Heyman, 2005; McDonald et al., 2003). Although there is a body of literature focusing on the barriers to advance planning regarding health care decisions among different ethnic groups (Bade, Murphy, & Sullivan, 1999; Hauser, Kleefield, Brennan, & Fischbach, 1997; Morrison, Zayas, Mulvihill, Baskin, & Meier, 1998), attention to interventions developed for use with Latino populations has been minimal. Research suggests that Latinos may not fully understand the health care proxy form or what it means to designate a health care agent (Hauser et al., 1997; Morrison et al., 1998; Romero, Lindeman, Koehler, & Allen, 1997). Furthermore, there has been little research on the effectiveness of providing end-of-life information in Spanish as one way of helping older people in their end-of-life planning. In addition, there has been little attention to including culturally relevant material in these discussions. Bonder, Martin, and Miracle (2001) noted the importance of developing culturally sensitive interventions to help Latinos in end-of-life planning. The purpose of this study was to determine which of two one-to-one educational interventions would influence Latino elders' attitudes toward and comfort with end-of-life planning when compared with a control group receiving only standard information routinely provided.