Tailored Educational Approaches for Consumer Health: A Model to Address Health Promotion in an Era of Personalized Medicine

Purpose:To develop a model, based on market segmentation, to improve the quality and efficiency of health promotion materials and programs.Design:Market segmentation to create segments (groups) based on a cross-sectional questionnaire measuring individual characteristics and preferences for health information. Educational and delivery recommendations developed for each group.Setting:General population of adults in Virginia.Participants:Random sample of 1201 Virginia residents. Respondents are representative of the general population with the exception of older age.Measures:Multiple factors known to impact health promotion including health status, health system utilization, health literacy, Internet use, learning styles, and preferences.Analysis:Cluster analysis and discriminate analysis to create and validate segments. Common sized means to compare factors across segments.Results:Developed educational and delivery recommendations matched to the 8 distinct segments. For example, the “health challenged and ...