Every Woman Matters: A multi-media community awareness event

Working with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Right to Know (RTK) campaign, the Montana Department of Public Health and Human Services and its Disability and Health Program (MTDH) are working to increase awareness about the importance of breast cancer screening among women with physical disabilities. Every Woman Matters (EWM) is a strategy of the RTK campaign developed with local partners to raise awareness about the campaign and related issues and will be replicated in all target counties this year. We will describe the EWM production methods and multi-media components including black and white portraits and video-taped interviews of 12 Montana spokeswomen and summarize process evaluation data from the twelve major community partners responsible for the event and the spokeswomen themselves. We also will present summative evaluations from members of RTK target populations in Montana-- health care professionals, health care professional students, and members of the general public and local disability community. Professors and research assistants introduced the project to over 150 radiology technician and junior and senior nursing students providing the link to online pre-evaluation and later to post-evaluation surveys about general knowledge on providing healthcare to individuals with disabilities. Faculty, research assistants, and students not attending the event could view the video component on-line before completing a related post-evaluation. Community partners emailed members of local health care and disability communities links to on-line surveys about breast cancer, disability, and RTK campaign awareness and event attendance. Other EWM attendees were asked to return completed brie postcard post-evaluations.