Community Interventions in Non-medical Settings to Increase Informed Decision Making for Prostate Cancer Screening

This project is a community based participatory research collaboration that will enable increased informed decision making (IDM) for prostate cancer screening in Hispanic and African-American men. This will be done through the development of an educational program implemented in the communities of El Paso, Texas and Columbia, South Carolina to provide accurate information to men regarding prostate cancer screening in order to enable them to make informed decisions.

This project is a community based participatory research collaboration among two universities and two research networks that will enable increased Informed Decision Making (IDM) for prostate cancer screening in Hispanic and African American men. Our collaborating universities are the University of Texas Health Science center at Houston, Texas Prevention Research Center (TPRC), Baylor College of Medicine (BCM), and the University of South Carolina (USC). Our collaborating networks are the Latinos in a Network for Cancer Control (LINCC), and the South Carolina Cancer Research Network (SC-CRN). Through the LINCC and the SCCRN, we have been able to link to the Cancer and Chronic Disease Consortium (CCDC, El Paso) which is working with Hispanic communities and the South Carolina Baptist Education and Missionary Convention (BEMC) which is a network of African American churches. Following the quality criteria for inclusion in evidence reviews conducted by the Community Guide for Preventive Services, we will adapt existing interventions and evaluate the effectiveness of these community-based IDM interventions for prostate cancer screening through two different studies, one at each site. We will first perform formative qualitative research in Hispanic communities in El Paso, Texas and in African American communities in Columbia, South Carolina. We will review existing IDM programs and contextual factors pertinent for adoption and dissemination in these two groups. Using the formative research and the review, we will adapt existing materials for intervention development in each group. For each study, the interventions will be evaluated using a pre-post-test delayed intervention comparison group design. As primary outcomes, we will measure the effect of community-based IDM interventions on men's knowledge of prostate cancer screening, participation in screening decisions at their desired level and whether participation was congruent with individual values and preferences in decision-making.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Males from approximately 40 to 70 years old

Exclusion Criteria:

• Males who have been diagnosed with prostate cancer or other prostate problems