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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Virgil Simons, MBA¹, Lynne Scott-Jackson, BA², Paul Frantellizzi³, Barbara Vanderkolk Gardner⁴, Daniel M. Rosenblum, PhD⁵, Punam J. Parikh, MPH⁵, and Stanley H. Weiss, MD⁶. (1) The Prostate Net, 835 Summit Avenue, Hackensack, NJ 07601, 201-342-3202, virgil@prostatenet.org, (2) Millynneum, Inc., 115 West 29th Street, 10th Floor, New York, NY 10001, (3) Educational Technology Group, Mount Sinai School of Medicine, One Gustave L. Levy Place, Annenberg Building, Box 1108 / Room 12-51, New York, NY 10029, (4) Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, Suite 200, 180 Mount Airy Road, Basking Ridge, NJ 07920-2021, (5) Preventive Medicine and Community Health, University of Medicine and Dentistry-New Jersey Medical School, 30 Bergen St., ADMC 16, Suite 1614, Newark, NJ 07107, (6) Department of Preventive Medicine & Community Health / Epidemiology, UMDNJ - New Jersey Medical School & New Jersey School of Public Health, 30 Bergen St, Bldg 16, Suite ADMC 1614, Newark, NJ 07107-3000

The Prostate Net, a national patient education and advocacy organization, has developed the Barbershop Initiative, which enlists barbers nationwide to collaborate with local medical centers as front-line health educators on prostate cancer, targeting minority communities. Barbershops are particularly well trusted venues, especially in minority communities, for discussions about such personal matters as health. A new program within that initiative, The Knowledge Net Barbershop, adds multimedia computer workstations in selected barbershops to provide both video clips and text-based educational material as well as broadband Internet access to a limited set of relevant web sites. These workstations have been designed to be used by patrons with little or no computer experience as well as with a broad range of literacy levels.

Material developed and assembled by The Prostate Net was programmed by a team from the Division of Educational Technology – Mount Sinai School of Medicine to create the workstations. Patrons can quickly access multimedia information on various aspects of prostate cancer, as well as view current news and information on the accessible web sites.

Furthermore, the computers include voluntary surveys of the patrons who use them, thus permitting the collection of information useful in evaluating this outreach program. The survey results, which are anonymous, are automatically transmitted back to a secure web site where they can be accessed only by The Prostate Net and its evaluation team. Analysis of these data will enable The Prostate Net to further enhance its innovative efforts and will inform similar educational initiatives on other health concerns.

Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the presentation, the participant will be able to

• Describe the benefits of developing computer workstations in trusted community-based locations for health education.
• Describe the major steps involved in developing community-based multimedia health educational workstations.
• List the components of a community-based multimedia health educational workstation.

Keywords: Cancer, Community Health Promoters

Related Web page: www.prostate-online.org/

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered