Abstract A68: Extending Cancer 101: Public Health Graduate Students' Perception of Newly Developed HPV Module
Authors: Moreno Laura , Marrero Miguel , Ruiz Lynette , Vadaparampil Susan , Jimenez Julio , Giuliano Anna , Quinn Gwen , Antonia Teresita 
Published: March 2017

Introduction: Human papilloma virus (HPV) is the most common viral and sexually transmitted infection in the United States. Although the infection may clear without intervention, persistent infection can lead to negative health consequences for men and women. The HPV vaccine prevents cervical cancer and genital warts; however, vaccination uptake and completion of the 3-dose series among Hispanics fall below Healthy People 2020 objectives of 80% of adolescents ages 13-15 completing the three dose series. In an effort to reduce cancer health disparities among the Puerto Rican community, the NCI-funded PACHE partnership between Moffitt Cancer Center and Ponce Health Sciences University (PSHU) developed a culturally adapted version of a 10 module educational curriculum “Cancer 101: A Cancer Education and Training Program” (Cancer 101) as a tool for training graduate public health students who can later become community health workers (CHWs). The use of trained CHWs among Hispanic communities has been successful in health education and promotion. Previous outreach initiatives of the partnership have demonstrated that a single CHW has the ability to reach over 100 people at a community event. The purpose of this study was to develop and have a qualitative perception of the usefulness, language, and quality of a HPV module with students enrolled in the PHSU Public Health (PH) Program.

Methods: Graduate level students (n=7) from the PHSU PH Program participated in a three-hour cognitive debriefing session to discuss the Cancer 101 HPV module. Students received an 11- item pre and post evaluation and were asked to answer questions about their HPV vaccine attitudes and knowledge and whether or not they would recommend it to the community. The module was presented for group discussion on the content as well as the comprehensibility, functionality, utility, and satisfaction. The post-evaluation was administered after the discussion.

Results: Overall, participants were satisfied with the module's comprehensibility, functionality, content, and utility. However, some terminology used in the module, such as, “tabaquismo, circunciso, incidence” needed to be tailored to the Puerto Rican community. Before the presentation, several students stated they did not know enough about vaccination in males. The main known reason given pre-presentation to recommend the vaccine, was the prevention against the virus, whereas, known reasons to recommend the vaccine post-presentation, included knowledge of HPV linkage with several types of cancer and the importance of vaccinating both males and females as well as completion of 3 doses of the vaccine.

Conclusion: Attitudes and knowledge about the HPV vaccine and how HPV is linked to several cancers, improved after the presentation. The availability of well-informed graduate students to serve as CHW is an easily sustainable and promising method to improve HPV vaccination uptake and completion among community members as well as promoting cancer education and awareness of primary prevention with the long term goal of reducing health disparities among the Puerto Rican community.

Citation Format: Laura Moreno, Miguel Marrero, Lynette Ruiz, Susan Vadaparampil, Julio Jimenez, Anna Giuliano, Gwen Quinn, Teresita Antonia. Extending Cancer 101: Public Health Graduate Students' Perception of Newly Developed HPV Module. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Ninth AACR Conference on the Science of Cancer Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; 2016 Sep 25-28; Fort Lauderdale, FL. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2017;26(2 Suppl):Abstract nr A68.