4264.0: Tuesday, November 14, 2000 - 4:45 PM

Abstract #11228

An Educational Intervention Program to Increase Mammography Screening Among African American Females

Baqar, A Husaini, PhD, Center for Health Research, Tennessee State University, 3500 John A. Merritt Blvd, Nashville, TN 37209, 615-320-3005, Bhusaini@earthlink.net

This educational intervention program on mammography has two broad objectives: 1) to increase breast self-examination (BSE), and 2) to increase mammography screening and clinical breast examination (CBE) among African American females aged 40 and over. This outreach program stems from recent data from CDC which shows that breast cancer is the number one cause of death among African American females, and secondly, that despite this high cancer mortality, mammography screening is underutilized by African American women. For example, at the national level, only 54.9 of African American women had a mammography in the past two years. In Tennessee, among Medicare beneficiaries the mammography rates have continued to decline from 24.4% in 1994 to 15.8% in 1995.

The proposed intervention will be offered to female parishioners, over 40 years of age, at collaborating churches, after the Sunday service. The intervention program has two parts: video viewing and a Q&A session with the audience (given to all 200 subjects in the experimental group, and 2) a visit by a trained home health educator to randomly selected subjects. This educational program uses a quasi-experimental design and will be implemented through 50 Black churches. This study will be conducted on 200 African American from these collaborating black churches. The churches will be stratified by their size and median income of the census tracts in which they exist, and using a stratified sampling procedure, 50 of these churches will be randomly selected for the study.

Learning Objectives: Discuss ways to increase breast self examination (BSE) among African American females. Identify a program to increase mammography screening and clinical breast examination (CBE) among African American females. Discuss an intervention program to address mammography screening for African American females aged 40 and over

Keywords: Mammography Screening, Access and Services

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: Historically Black Colleges and Universities Black Churches Community Based health organizations
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.

The 128th Annual Meeting of APHA