Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #110883

Giulia Norton, MPH¹, Mary Harris, PhD², Pat Kusimo, PhD², Nicole Pacheco³, and Ricki Jarmon¹. (1) Abt Associates Inc., 55 Wheeler Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, 617-520-3542, giulia_norton@abtassoc.com, (2) BioTechnical Communications, 227 Sandy Springs Place, Suite 103D-190, Atlanta, GA 30327, (3) Abt Associates, Inc., 55 Wheeler St., Cambridge, MA 02138

Journey to Wellness provides health information by and for African-Americans using the radio and Internet. To evaluate its colon cancer tools, we assigned 712 African-American adults, ages 50-65, to one of three intervention groups – assigned to listen to the radio show, visit the website, or perform both tasks – or a control group, which listened to a Journey to Wellness radio show about health insurance. Participants were surveyed before the task and twice after the task, immediately and four months later.

The participants responded very positively to the educational tools. More importantly, the radio show and website were clearly effective at increasing knowledge, awareness, a sense of personal risk, and the likelihood of getting screened for colon cancer. The group that both listened to the show and visited the website demonstrated stronger effects than the groups that received the information through one medium. While the effect generally attenuated over time, in some interesting cases the effect grew over time.

We will describe the intervention and analytic approach to the evaluation, including indices that subtly measured summary effects and two measures of susceptibility. We will also present follow-up analyses of questions raised in the evaluation. Was there a “trigger” variable -- was there one fact that, once understood, enabled people to change multiple beliefs? Was change in level of susceptibility correlated with belief that colon cancer is fatal? Is there a relationship between risk reduction techniques recalled and likelihood of changing behavior?

Learning Objectives: At the end of this session, participants will be able to

• describe two interventions that effectively educate older African American about colon cancer;
• discuss why the combined intervention was more effective than each separate intervention; and
• analyze reasons for change found in the control group.

Keywords: African American, Media Campaigns

Related Web page: journeytowellness.com/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.