Background: Health education is a vital component of preventative care; however, rural Filipino adults often face structural, linguistic, and access barriers to obtaining reliable health information. Designing equitable and culturally relevant health education programs requires understanding which sources are most significant and how context affects them. Objective: To identify preferred sources of health education among adults in rural Philippine communities and investigate the contextual factors that influence these preferences. Methods: A cross-sectional mixed-methods study included 1203 adults from disadvantaged Luzon and Visayas barangays. Participants completed a self-administered survey on the importance of neighborhood health fairs, native-language instructional tools, and social media. Descriptive statistics (mean ± standard deviation) were used to aggregate importance ratings, and exploratory comparisons were made using paired and independent-samples t-tests. A subsample of 60 semi-structured interviews was analyzed using thematic analysis to interpret qualitative data. Results: Community health fairs were identified as the primary source of health education, with a mean rating of 8.5 ± 1.6, followed by native-language educational materials, which received a mean rating of 5.5 ± 2.4. In contrast, social media was rated the lowest, with a mean of 3.5 ± 2.3. Preference patterns were consistent across regions and sociodemographic groups, with only slight variation in rating magnitudes. Qualitative analysis revealed four themes influencing source preferences: accessibility and proximity, cultural and linguistic relevance, confidence in local health providers, and structural obstacles to digital access. Conclusions: In rural Philippine communities, intimacy, confidence, and cultural congruence influence health education preferences more than online platforms do. Strengthening community-based, locally integrated health education strategies may enhance the reach and contextual relevance of preventive health communication in underserved settings.

Background: Chronic pain is a leading contributor to disability worldwide, yet population-based data from rural and medically underserved settings remain limited. Evidence describing the biopsychosocial correlates of chronic pain in rural Filipino communities is particularly scarce. Methods: We conducted a secondary analysis of cross-sectional data from the I-HELP-FILIPINO community cohort, collected between January and June 2017. Participants included 909 adults aged 18–93 years who voluntarily attended barangay clinic days in rural Philippine communities. Pain severity was assessed with standardized self-report tools. Sociodemographic, psychosocial, sleep, and functional health factors were examined using bivariate analysis and hierarchical linear regression. Results are shown with 95% confidence intervals. Results: Chronic pain was very common, affecting 83.8% of participants, with 5.6% experiencing severe pain. In multivariable models, psychosocial distress, sleep issues, and reduced physical functioning were significantly linked to increased pain severity, while demographic factors contributed minimally to the variance. Most of the explained variance in pain outcomes was accounted for by psychosocial and clinical variables. Conclusions: In this rural Filipino cohort, chronic pain was strongly associated with modifiable psychosocial, sleep, and functional health factors. Focusing on community-based and culturally tailored interventions can inspire hope and empower healthcare professionals and policymakers to tackle these issues more effectively.

Background/Objectives: Filipino Americans are one of the least likely Asian American subgroups to use formal mental health services, even when mental health needs are present. This study used the Capability–Opportunity–Motivation–Behavior (COM-B) framework to examine mental health symptomatology, perceived social support, help-seeking intentions, and perceived barriers to mental health treatment among Filipino American older adults residing in the United States. Methods: We used a cross-sectional descriptive correlational design. A sample of 100 Filipino American older adults completed the Patient Health Questionnaire-9, Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7, an 8-item subset of the Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, the Mental Health Seeking Intention Scale, and the Perceived Barriers to Psychological Treatment scale. We performed descriptive statistics and correlation analyses using Pearson’s and Spearman’s coefficients. Results: Participants experienced low levels of depressive symptoms (M = 2.73, SD = 4.80) and anxiety symptoms (M = 2.56, SD = 4.11), high perceived social support (M = 5.32, SD = 1.83), moderate help-seeking intentions (M = 4.90, SD = 2.18), low overall perceived barriers to care (M = 1.67, SD = 0.90), and nearly universal health insurance coverage. Of the barrier domains, stigma/interpersonal barriers had the highest mean scores. Greater depressive and anxiety symptom severity was associated with higher overall perceived barriers to mental health care (r = 0.45–0.47) and with higher structural, motivational, and stigma/interpersonal barriers (r = 0.41–0.46). Conclusions: Despite high healthcare access and strong perceived social support, Filipino American older adults expressed only moderate intentions to seek professional mental health care. Culturally mediated factors may shape mental health help-seeking beyond structural barriers to access. The COM-B framework offers a useful lens for understanding help-seeking behavior and guiding culturally responsive interventions with Filipino American older adults.