Culturally Appropriate Tools Up Testing

Colorectal cancer screening rates can be improved using a health educator empowered with culturally appropriate educational tools, finds a U.S. study.

Chinese-speaking patients were six times more likely to be screened for colorectal cancer when a clinic-based, multi-lingual health educator provided culturally and linguistically appropriate counseling, educational materials and screening test instructions, says study leader Dr. Shin-Ping Tu of the Harborview Medical Center/University of Washington and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle.

In this randomized control clinical trial, one group received standard of care and the other group received counseling from a trilingual and bicultural health educator and were given multilingual educational materials including video, pamphlets and fecal occult blood testing instructions.

Within the six months of the intervention, seven out of 10 people in the intervention arm had completed fecal occult blood testing screening compared to fewer than three out of 10 in the control group, according to the study published in the September issue of Cancer.