Efficacy of touchscreen kiosks in prompting colorectal cancer screening behavior among low-income Latinos

Latino colorectal cancer screening rates are significantly below the Healthy People 2010 benchmark. Recent CDC data indicate that only 24.4% of Latinos over age 50 had received a FIT/FOBT within the past two years and 46.6% had ever had a sigmoidoscopy; the screening rates for low-income Latinos were even lower. This screening disparity places Latinos at high risk for late-stage cancer diagnoses and lower chances of survival. Regular colorectal cancer screening can significantly improve Latino colorectal cancer survival, yet interventions to improve screening rates must effectively overcome several significant and persistent barriers.

This presentation describes an education intervention designed to deliver culturally and linguistically appropriate colorectal cancer information to low-income, low literacy Latino men and women through interactive, multimedia touchscreen kiosks to overcome attention, knowledge, attitudinal, linguistic and cultural barriers. The intervention content was guided by formative research that identified barriers to screening as well as pathways to screening among low-income Latinos adherent to the 2005 USPSTF recommendations for colorectal cancer screening.

A randomized control trial with 750 low-income Latinos was conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the evaluation to improve knowledge about colorectal cancer, improve attitudes towards screening, increase self-efficacy and promote adoption of screening and risk reduction behavior. Latino patients at two community clinics were recruited and administered a pretest before randomizing them to either an intervention or control group. A posttest was administered six months past baseline to examine the intervention effect. This presentation describes the intervention design, study findings and their implications to reducing health disparities.