Improving Recruitment, Retention, and Cultural Saliency of Health Promotion Efforts Targeting African American Men: A Scoping Review

Abstract

Abstract Background When health promotion efforts intend to include African American men, they experience challenges with recruitment and retention, in addition to limited cultural saliency—interventions that do not align the cultural preferences and experiences of the target population produce less effective results. Purpose This scoping review provides an understanding of (a) how health promotion efforts among African American men are developed and implemented, in addition to the (b) main outcomes, (c) retention rates, and (d) methodological rigor of those efforts. Methods The following databases were used: PubMed, EMBASE (Ovid), PsycINFO (EBSCO), CINAHL (EBSCO), Web of Science (Clarivate), and ProQuest. Included studies were restricted to those: (a) conducted among African American men and (b) reported the effects of a health promotion intervention. Interventions using single-group pre–post study, post-test-only study, non-randomized controlled trial, and randomized controlled trial (RCT) study designs were included. Results The results indicate that varying degrees of customization in the design and implementation of health promotion efforts targeting African American can improve recruitment, retention, and health-related outcomes. Results draw attention to the need for community input when designing and implementing efforts targeting these men. Conclusions These results indicate that opportunities exist to innovate health promotion efforts among African American men, such as the intentional incorporation of the community’s values, perspectives, and preferences in the effort (i.e., cultural saliency) and explicitly indicating how the efforts were culturally tailored to improve saliency. Opportunities also exist to innovate health promotion efforts among African American men based on literature-derived best practices.