Lay Health Workers and Colorectal Cancer Screening Among Chinese Americans

Summary

This proposed project seeks to expand understanding of what constitutes a "lay health worker (LHW)," how those characteristics determine the effectiveness of LHWs as health educators on colorectal cancer (CRC) screening, and the relationship of those characteristics to a particular community and culture. Using quantitative and qualitative methods and a community-based participatory research (CBPR) approach, the project will develop and implement a group randomized controlled trial to evaluate LHW effectiveness in promoting CRC screening among Chinese Americans age 50 to 75 with a pilot component to evaluate the role of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) healers as health educators.

The investigators will conduct focus groups with community participants to revise training materials developed in a prior pilot project. The investigators will also conduct ethnographic observations of TCM healers and focus groups with their clients to refine the training materials. The investigators will recruit 26 LHWs to be assigned to the intervention arm and 26 to the comparison arm. The LHWs will each recruit 12 participants from their social network for a total of 312 participants in each arm. The intervention group participants will be exposed to 2 LHWO sessions and 2 telephone calls aimed at increasing their CRC screening receipt. The comparison group will receive a bilingual CRC brochure as well as a lecture on healthy nutrition for cardiovascular health and a post-intervention LHWO session on CRC screening. Effectiveness of the intervention will be measured by pre-intervention and post-intervention surveys of community participants' CRC screening behaviors, with validation of self-reports. An additional 10 TCM healers will also participate as LHWs. They will each recruit 12 participants for LHWO. There will be extensive ethnographic observations as well as post-intervention focus groups of LHWO activities, LHWs, and LHWO participants to assess the factors that contribute to effective LHWO.

The primary hypothesis is that the increase in the proportion of participants who report ever having had a CRC screening test in the experimental group (LHWO about CRC) will be greater than the increase in the comparison group (nutrition education + CRC brochure).

Conditions

• Colorectal Neoplasms

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

LHWO about CRC

2 LHWO sessions and 2 telephone calls aimed at increasing their CRC screening receipt

BEHAVIORAL

Nutrition Education + CRC brochure

Bilingual CRC brochure as well as a lecture on healthy nutrition for cardiovascular health and a post-intervention LHWO session on CRC screening.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• San Francisco State University

  collaborator OTHER

• NICOS Chinese Health Coalition

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of California, San Francisco

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Tung T Nguyen, MD · University of California, San Francisco

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

50 Years

Max Age

75 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2009-09-30

Primary Completion

2014-05-31

Completion

2014-05-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations