We propose to develop a culturally and educationally appropriate intervention aimed at the prevention and early detection of cervical and breast cancer in underserved women (minorities and the elderly) and to assure its delivery to 4000 home health care workers in training and an additional 10,000 or more of the 20,000 workers now on the job. The intervention will result in increased utilization of screening and modification of risk behaviors. The home health care workers are themselves predominantly underserved minority women, as are many among the predominantly elderly women clients the workers serve. The effects of the intervention will be further multiplied by the influence the worker has on her family members and friends, owing to her role as informal health advisor. The intervention will be delivered directly by the faculty and students of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine/Montefiore Medical Center and through the Bronx Community College, and an existing network of in-service trainers who provide required basic and continuing education for home health care workers in the Bronx. State of the art CME courses for community physicians will be a second principal component of this comprehensive project. The project's direct efforts will be reinforced through distribution of newsletters for professionals and health care workers, and a public information campaign in the Bronx media. We will also undertake to bring the program to institution-based health care workers and will explore the possibilities of developing and disseminating a training package to other urban communities. Involving many Einstein faculty and students in the project will provide a base for extending the Cancer Center beyond its present exclusive emphasis on research. The community networks of physicians and health care workers developed during this project will also constitute a resource upon which to build future preventive efforts of the Cancer Center.
| Carter, Jeanne; Park, Elyse R; Moadel, Alyson et al. (2002) Cancer knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and practices (KABP) of disadvantaged women in the South Bronx. J Cancer Educ 17:142-9 |
