The purpose of this Academic Investigator Award is to support the candidate's career transition into nursing research in cancer control. The goal is to strengthen the candidate's ability to conduct independent research.
Aims of this career development plan are to conduct community- based research to test culturally appropriate nursing interventions targeting multiethnic low-income older women, and to receive training in community-based cancer control research. The proposed research targets low-income ethnic minority women to promote breast and cervical cancer screening in women 40 years of age and older. The research evaluates the feasibility of using social influence strategies to recruit younger women to be intermediaries who promote cancer screening with older women family members and friends. The theoretical rationale derives form the psychology of women, social influence, and the importance of relationships in women's lives. The research is placed in the multicultural context of Hawaii, in which many cultures place a high value on mothers, older women, and family relationships. Younger women will be recruited in a low income family planning clinic. Two nursing interventions are experimentally varied; (a) nursing influence (expert power), and (b) nurse/lay-health-educator influence (referent power). The hypothesis tested is that nurse/lay-health-educator influence will be more effective in recruiting younger women to serve as cancer control intermediaries. Overall effectiveness will be defined as an older woman's completion of recommended screening or her increased readiness to complete or maintain screening. The proposed career development activities include conducting community-based research to test culturally-appropriate nursing interventions that target low-income minority women, and to receive training in community-based cancer control research. Additional research training includes involvement in a community-based cancer control research study in a rural Native Hawaiian community and planned learning experiences in the university and the community. The significance for Nursing includes: (a) contributing to the profession's knowledge base in women's health, with respect to social and cultural determinants of women's health behavior; (b) increasing nursing involvement in cancer control research; (c) defining nursing cancer control interventions effective with ethnic minority older women; and (9) developing knowledge about how nursing influence compares with lay/peer influence and how these forms of influence interact with the influence of family members and friends in multiethnic populations.
