Abstract 3477: Graduate public health students as health educators: A pilot project to promote cancer health in Puerto Rico

Introduction: Community health workers, known as promotores de salud in Spanish, have been recognized as an effective communication channel to promote health education among marginalized groups. However, cancer education programs often cease efforts when funding ends. This can be particularly problematic in Puerto Rico (PR), where cancer is the leading cause of death. In an effort to identify new ways to provide sustainable cancer health education programs, the NCI-funded PACHE partnership between Moffitt Cancer Center and Ponce Health Sciences University (PSHU) trained graduate public health students to disseminate cancer education to PR communities. This was achieved by developing a culturally adapted version of “Cancer 101: A Cancer Education and Training Program” (Cancer 101) to the PR community. A pilot study was conducted to test students’ ability to: I) deliver the educational intervention, charlas, in the community; II) utilize a specific module from the curriculum, “Cancer in PR”, which focused on current island data and statistics, and definitions of the cancer and its various types; and III) to measure community members’ cancer knowledge before and after the charla. Methods: Students enrolled in the class Principles of Health Education in Practice (n = 15) participated in a two-day Cancer 101 training session. Upon completion, students were divided into 5 teams (n = 3 per team), each delivering the “Cancer in PR” charla to a community group of their selection. Cancer knowledge was assessed before and after the charla via a 10-item true or false questionnaire. Items were summed to create an overall knowledge score (range: 0-10). Results: A total of 201 participants attended the community educational intervention at 10 different locations in PR (Salinas Elderly, Guancha, Hogar San Jose, etc.). Participants pre and post-test mean score (SD) were 4.54 (2.31) and 7.65 (2.28) respectively, with a 3.1 (2.79) point increase in overall cancer knowledge (p Conclusion: Results from this pilot project suggest public health students are an innovative and sustainable way to improve cancer health communication and a novel strategy for reducing cancer health disparities. Citation Format: Laura Moreno, Himilce Velez, Julio Jimenez, Susan Vadaparampil, Teresita Munoz-Antonia, Jose Torres, Gwendolyn Quinn. Graduate public health students as health educators: A pilot project to promote cancer health in Puerto Rico. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the 107th Annual Meeting of the American Association for Cancer Research; 2016 Apr 16-20; New Orleans, LA. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Res 2016;76(14 Suppl):Abstract nr 3477.