Abstracts

Rationale: Epilepsy is a disorder in which nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed, causing seizures. More than 3.4 million Americans are living with epilepsy, and more than 40% of those living with epilepsy are racial and ethnic populations, specifically Blacks and Hispanics. Many racial minorities living with epilepsy have poorer health outcomes than Whites. Epilepsy disparities among racial and ethnic populations exists due to lack of access to care, being able to afford treatments and medications, in addition to stigma and discrimination. There is a need to increase epilepsy education and awareness among multicultural communities. The Epilepsy Foundation (EF) built upon its 2019 Minority Outreach Pilot Program to increase epilepsy outreach in minority communities.

Methods: Mini-Grants were offered to 10 local organizations to ensure culturally competent and appropriate epilepsy education was offered in diverse communities from July 2020 to March 2021. Through a competitive process, 22 applications were received and scored and 10 selected to be awarded $10,000 each to conduct training, outreach and/or media activities targeting African Americans, Blacks, Asian Americans, Hispanics, and Native Hawaiians. Projects were implemented in the following states: Kentucky, Indiana, Texas, New York, Minnesota, Colorado, Hawaii, Illinois, Arizona, Colorado, and Georgia. The Foundation provided epilepsy education training; resources and materials; technical assistance with health equity and social determinants concepts; and evaluation guidance. The hashtag #EpilepsyEquity was used to track online epilepsy outreach to minority communities thorough social media engagement.

Results: The 10 mini-grantees implemented epilepsy social media messages with the #EpilesyEquity hashtag gaining more than 1,094,148 impressions. In Kentucky and Texas, epilepsy public service announcements were aired on urban radio and tv stations. By providing seizure first aid trainings, community forums targeting the Hmong community in Minnesota, virtual educational sessions and self-management groups, more than 7,717 individuals were impacted through these projects. Traditional media projects included ads wrapped around and in buses targeting African Americans, newspaper campaigns, and more. Several projects were implemented in languages other than English, including Spanish, Arabic, and Native Hawaiian.

Conclusions: By building on the successes of the initial 2019 Minority Outreach Program, the Foundation was able to strengthen its capacity to conduct epilepsy awareness and education in diverse populations. The Minority Health Outreach Mini-Grant Program was able to have a significant reach in less than a year. Community-based approaches to health education is an effective methodology for improving the health outcomes of multicultural populations affected by epilepsy.

Funding: Please list any funding that was received in support of this abstract.: This work made possible with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) under cooperative agreement number 1NU58DP006256-04-00. Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the views of the CDC.