Spiritually-based Colorectal Cancer Education: Feasibility of implementation, and preliminary evaluation

Colorectal cancer is the second leading cause of cancer mortality in the United States. Significant racial disparities exist such that African Americans have higher incidence as well as mortality rates than all other racial/ethnic groups. One reason for the disparity is lower rates of screening among African Americans as compared to Whites. A number of interventions have been proposed to address the underutilization of screening. One successful approach has been the development of culturally-relevant interventions through a community-based participatory approach. The literature suggests that religiosity, an important aspect of African American culture, has been shown to be positively associated with health outcomes and behaviors. One way of making cancer communications interventions more relevant to the African American community is to integrate spiritually-based content. In this study, a culturally relevant and spiritually-based intervention focusing on promotion of colorectal cancer screening among church-attending African Americans age 50 and older was implemented and evaluated. The intervention was delivered by trained Community Health Advisors who taught group sessions on colorectal cancer and screening, using print materials developed and piloted for this study. This presentation describes the church recruitment processes, and intervention implementation and preliminary evaluation.