The Health Education and Communications (HEC) Core will provide overall support to the Small Business and Health Center projects to assure that intervention strategies and promotional and educational materials are: (1) suited to multi-ethnic, working class audiences; (2) use languages appropriate for patients and workers; (3) utilize integrative approaches for building social support for behavior change; and (4) are grounded in principles for communications and behavior change theory.
The specific aims of the core are to: (1) provide a structure for assuring synergy across the two intervention projects and the Core, and synthesizing the input of community and scientific advisors in the design of interventions and educational materials; (2) develop intervention strategies and promotional and educational materials that incorporate elements of the social context and are effective in changing multi cancer prevention risk factors in multiethnic, working class populations; (3) maintain the overall integrity of the interventions by providing consistency and quality assurance, in materials development and production across the two intervention projects; (4) based on the results of intervention programs, coordinate the development of final products for the Core and the intervention projects for possible local, state and national distribution. Methods to be used by the HEC Core to accomplish it specific aims include: (1) provide a structure that will facilitate communication between and among HEC Core staff, project staff, and community and scientific advisory boards; (2) plan, conduct, analyze and report results of formative research from focus group and one on one interviews to inform the design of intervention strategies and materials; (3) facilitate collaborative intervention planning between HEC Core and project staff; (4) provide review of extant educational materials and design, development and production of new materials; (5) establish review and quality assurance systems to ensure overall integrity of project interventions; and (6) collaborative with project leaders and advisory groups to plan for distribution of study findings and products and for the dissemination of study results to the professional scientific community.
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