Abstract A16: Promoting colorectal cancer screening in urban, minority populations with community health workers.

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the third most common cancer and cause of cancer-related death in the United States. Screening prevents not only mortality but also the occurrence of CRC. Our group reaches out to and educates members of our predominantly low-income Hispanic and African American community about cancer treatment, research, and prevention by establishing partnerships with community-based organizations (CBOs) and training community health workers (CHWs). In 2010, we learned that relatively few CBO clients had been screened or intended to be screened for CRC, and that the CHWs also were not well informed about CRC. Methods: We developed an enhanced training program about CRC for CHWs and their clients. We renewed two of our CBO partnerships, added one more, retrained some previously trained CHWs, and recruited and trained CHWs from the new CBO. We developed a new pre- and post-training 10-question instrument to evaluate what the CHWs already knew and what they learned from our training. We compared the CHWs' average scores (proportions of correct answers) before and after the training. Further training was conducted to reinforce CHWs' knowledge. Using focus groups and community-based participatory research methods with the CHWs, we then developed two educational interventions that the CHWs will implement in the coming months. Results: Fifteen CHWs were trained or retrained. Most of the participating CHWs had previously received our training. All of them answered at least 6 of the 10 questions correctly both before and after the training, but average scores improved from 75% correct before the training to 82% correct afterwards. Next steps: Each CHW will educate 20 clients (n=300) aged 50+ years about CRC screening and attempt to schedule them for screening. In the two intervention groups, we will compare proportions of clients who receive CRC screening. Results will be disseminated to the community in our quarterly community newsletter, a report to the CBOs, and a press release to the local media. Citation Format: Martha Sanchez, Maxine Ashby-Thompson, Judith S. Jacobson, Patricia Hepburn, Victor E. Grann. Promoting colorectal cancer screening in urban, minority populations with community health workers. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Fifth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2012 Oct 27-30; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(10 Suppl):Abstract nr A16.