Abstract FO02-02: Community-based participatory research for cancer prevention and control in African Americans.
Authors: Halbert Chanita Hughes , Briggs Vanessa , Bellamy Scarlett , Delmoor Ernestine , Johnson Jerry , Purnell Joseph , Rogers Rodney , Weathers Benita 
Published: August 2014

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is emerging as an important strategy for reducing cancer health disparities. CBPR is an approach that actively and meaningfully engages academic and community stakeholders in the development, implementation, and evaluation of programmatic efforts to improve health outcomes in a community. The West Philadelphia Consortium to Address Disparities was established with funding from the NIMHD to identify and address cancer health disparities among African Americans in the Philadelphia metropolitan area. As part of this partnership, we have evaluated the effects behavioral interventions to improve diet and physical activity, community-based approaches to increase access to information about cancer control through navigation, and compared the effects of alternate strategies for disseminating information about breast cancer prevention. This presentation will address several cross-cutting issues that are relevant to community-based approaches for reducing cancer health disparities. For instance, our findings demonstrate that while there are few barriers to using community-based navigation for cancer control and acceptance rates are high, with more than 70% of referred subjects completing navigation, subjects who believe that they are at high risk for developing cancer have a significantly lower likelihood of being a navigator acceptor. Further, while previous research has shown that cancer risk information is effective at motivating early detection for cancer, empirical data are limited on the effects of risk factor information on prevention behaviors, especially in populations that are at increased risk for developing other diseases that are consequences of physical inactivity and poor dietary behaviors. As part of this partnership, we conducted a randomized trial to evaluate the effects of integrated (IRC) versus disease-specific (DSC) risk factor education on lifestyle prevention behaviors in a community-based sample of African American adults (n=212). We predicted that IRC, or risk education that provided education about the overlap in behavioral risk factors for cancer and cardiovascular disease would lead to greater adherence rates compared to DSC, a protocol that only provided education about behavioral risk factors for cardiovascular disease. IRC was associated with increased adherence rates for fruit intake only (OR=1.85, 95% CI=0.99, 3.44, p=0.05) compared to DSC. At baseline, 37.4% of participants who were randomized to IRC met the recommended guidelines for fruit intake, but at follow-up 57.4% were adherent. There were no significant changes in adherence rates for fruit intake among those who were randomized to DSC (31.1% versus 41.5%). Our findings suggest that integrated risk factor education leads to improved behavioral prevention for some outcomes. Making multiple behavioral changes simultaneously may be difficult. Best practices for establishing and maintaining academic-community partnerships to address cancer health disparities and to sustain these efforts will also be discussed.

Citation Format: Chanita Hughes Halbert, Vanessa Briggs, Scarlett Bellamy, Ernestine Delmoor, Jerry Johnson, Joseph Purnell, Rodney Rogers, Benita Weathers. Community-based participatory research for cancer prevention and control in African Americans. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Fifth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2012 Oct 27-30; San Diego, CA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21(10 Suppl):Abstract nr FO02-02.