Using a communication approach to understand the antecedents of medical mistrust: Testing the ecological medical mistrust antecedents (EMMA) model
type: CreativeWork
description: Medical mistrust, distrust in the motives of medical personnel and institutions, has been cited as a barrier to engagement in several positive health behaviors. It has been associated with decreased likelihood of engaging in routine health check-ups (Hammond, Matthews, Mohottige, Agyemang, & Corbie-Smith, 2010), undergoing cancer screenings (e.g., Thompson, Valdimarsdottir, Winkel, Jandorf, & Redd, 2004), adhering to treatment (e.g., Kalichman, Eaton, Kalichman, & Cherry, 2017) and becoming a registered organ donor (Morgan, Stephenson, Harrison, Afifi, & Long, 2008). As a result, medical mistrust is a pervasive barrier that cuts across health contexts and topics; this makes addressing medical mistrust a critical step towards improving health outcomes. Despite calls for investigation into medical mistrust (e.g., Adams & Simoni, 2016; Scharff et al., 2010), little work has been done, including within the field of communication, that explicitly examines medical mistrust as a phenomenon of interest. More specifically, there is a dearth of work examining the antecedents of medical mistrust. There is a single model in quantitative medical mistrust work that conceptualizes medical mistrust antecedents; however, this model neglects communication and was only designed to examine medical mistrust among Black men. A recent review of medical mistrust noted the lack of work in medical mistrust that examines antecedents and uses modeling techniques that allow for mediation to be investigated (Benkert, Cuevas, Thompson, Dove-Meadows, & Knuckles, 2019). To address these gaps, the current dissertation proposed a new model of medical mistrust – the Ecological Medical Mistrust Antecedents (EMMA) model, which posited that negative health-care socialization, negative health-care experiences, and racial discrimination experiences influence medical mistrust and that these relationships are mediated by perceived racism in health care and perceived financial corruption in health care. In do…
abstract: Medical mistrust, distrust in the motives of medical personnel and institutions, has been cited as a barrier to engagement in several positive health behaviors. It has been associated with decreased likelihood of engaging in routine health check-ups (Hammond, Matthews, Mohottige, Agyemang, & Corbie-Smith, 2010), undergoing cancer screenings (e.g., Thompson, Valdimarsdottir, Winkel, Jandorf, & Redd, 2004), adhering to treatment (e.g., Kalichman, Eaton, Kalichman, & Cherry, 2017) and becoming a registered organ donor (Morgan, Stephenson, Harrison, Afifi, & Long, 2008). As a result, medical mistrust is a pervasive barrier that cuts across health contexts and topics; this makes addressing medical mistrust a critical step towards improving health outcomes. Despite calls for investigation into medical mistrust (e.g., Adams & Simoni, 2016; Scharff et al., 2010), little work has been done, including within the field of communication, that explicitly examines medical mistrust as a phenomenon of interest. More specifically, there is a dearth of work examining the antecedents of medical mistrust. There is a single model in quantitative medical mistrust work that conceptualizes medical mistrust antecedents; however, this model neglects communication and was only designed to examine medical mistrust among Black men. A recent review of medical mistrust noted the lack of work in medical mistrust that examines antecedents and uses modeling techniques that allow for mediation to be investigated (Benkert, Cuevas, Thompson, Dove-Meadows, & Knuckles, 2019). To address these gaps, the current dissertation proposed a new model of medical mistrust – the Ecological Medical Mistrust Antecedents (EMMA) model, which posited that negative health-care socialization, negative health-care experiences, and racial discrimination experiences influence medical mistrust and that these relationships are mediated by perceived racism in health care and perceived financial corruption in health care. In do…
author: Williamson, Lillie Danielle
language: en
keywords: medical mistrust, health communication, health disparities, health care, African Americans, racial discrimination, news, vicarious experiences
date published: 2020-03-02T22:38:50Z
date modified: 2026-07-22T22:24:47Z
provider: University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

PropertyValue
property ID: Handle
value: http://hdl.handle.net/2142/106474