Building on the work of media studies this study will undertakes an analysis of health communication pieces (print, audio, and audiovisual) on type 2 diabetes developed with African American women as the priority population. A series of four focus groups and follow-up interviews will be conducted to elicit dialogue and narrative responses from African American women in three Alabama Black Belt counties. The data analysis is expected to reveal that divergent decodings of health education messages by minority women are not uncommon and are based in historical and phenomenological conditions of disparity in power and position. The study hopes to determine whether the decoding of health messages can give further insights to the complex causes and remedies for health disparities. This research will contribute to the fields of health education and health communication by enhancing the impact of culturally appropriate strategies through the use of analytical tools and theoretical frameworks that allow for a more robust conceptualization of culture and its operation than is allowed when using the standard positivistic media effects models. The study will contribute to the literature by offering a critical examination of the way social and cultural discourses mediate public health communication. This work will add to the growing body of work begun in the areas of community-based participatory research and cultural competence in health education, to follow a line of inquiry and method that will address one of the more complex public health challenges in our time – health disparities in chronic diseases. Objectives As a result of this presentation: Learners will increase the understanding of health communication as a strategy in addressing disparities in health.