Presentation description

"Culturally tailored" is often used loosely, particularly in programs for Pacific Islander (PI) communities, obscuring what intentional, community‑centered tailoring entails. We asked: What constitutes meaningful cultural tailoring for Pacific Islanders, and how can it be assessed?

Methods
Guided by literature, community insight, and personal experience, we-Madison Hewitt and Toni Ott under Paul Estabrooks' mentorship-identified five PI cultural domains: (1) family & community values, (2) faith integration, (3) cultural activities/practices, (4) traditional food/nutrition, and (5) visual/language representation. The resulting 16‑item Hewitt‑Ott Scale for Pacific Island-Based Cultural Adaptation assigns 0 ("not addressed"), 1 ("partially"), or 2 ("fully") to each item. Preliminary validity was tested by coding two lifestyle interventions from the EMBRACE trial: "Ocean" (designed for PIs) and "Mountain" (control). Two independent raters applied descriptive statistics and inter‑rater reliability.

Results
Across raters, Ocean outscored Mountain in four of five domains-family/community (1.03 vs 0.22), cultural activities (0.92 vs 0.00), traditional food/nutrition (0.59 vs 0.17), and visual/language representation (1.29 vs 0.17). Faith integration was similar (0.79 vs 0.67). Total scores differed markedly (Ocean = 4.61/10 possible; Mountain = 1.22/10). Inter‑rater correlation was strong (r = 0.89), demonstrating good reliability.

Conclusions
The Hewitt‑Ott Scale discriminated between a culturally tailored and a non‑tailored intervention for Pacific Islanders, offering preliminary evidence of construct validity and reliability. Broader application-especially through direct observation-will clarify its utility and help standardize assessments of cultural tailoring in PI health promotion.