Understanding Organ Donation Messaging: A Qualitative Inquiry.

Promoting health communication about organ donation remains a crucial objective within Native American communities. The goals of the current study were to communicate with young adult Native Americans about the Organ Donation Willingness Model (ODWM; Horton & Horton, 1991) to gain their responses to materials from campaigns about donation strategies tailored to Native American communities. Six focus groups were conducted with a total of 31 participants. Data were analyzed using thematic analysis (Braun & Clarke, 2019, 2022) and following Smith's guidelines (2008), which include showing deep respect for the group participants, conducting the study in a face-to-face setting, and being active listeners of the group and their cultural norms, exercising special attention towards those norms. The analysis generated four themes: (1) knowledge and transplantation support emerging from family and community factors; (2) conflicting cultural beliefs; (3) geographic opportunities for improved health care, and finally, (4) the presence of Native Americans as tokenized people in campaign messages. Future collaboration with rural communities and campaign messages could focus on approaches that emphasize communal voice, social representations theory, and clear message strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]