ASPO Abstracts
Results of a Pilot to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening in Low-Health Literacy Patients
Category: Behavioral Science & Health Communication
Conference Year: 2020
Abstract Body:
A pilot test of three videos developed for individuals with health literacy deficits was conducted to assess patients liking for the videos, knowledge gains, and changes in screening intentions for individuals ages 50-75 who were not current on screening for colorectal cancer (CRC).
The pilot was conducted in six of Iowa’s federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) which are known to serve high numbers of patients with low health literacy. Data was collected by embedding the videos and the pre- and post-test in Qualtrics survey software. Participants watched one of the three videos based on their answers to three screener questions on CRC-related knowledge and answered assessment items on an internet-enabled tablet.
A total of 291 individuals answered the screener questions, of which 74% were screened to the high-deficit, 12% were screened to the medium-deficit and 13% were screened to low-deficit videos. Attrition between the pre- and post-tests left a final N of 118 individuals with full data. The majority of those participants liked the videos at least “somewhat” (mean= 3.2 on 4-point scale), and 52% of participants indicated the videos were “interesting”. Participants also gained CRC knowledge from the video they watched with proportions of respondents that indicated they had gained knowledge ranged from a low of 73% to a high of 93% across the different areas. Overall, the videos had a significant, medium effect size on (t (117)=-5.37, p=.000) on screening intentions from pre- (M=2.79, SD=1.40) to post-test (M=3.42, SD=1.42).
This pilot provides promising results about the effectiveness of providing patient-education to low-health literacy individuals in attempts to increase CRC screening rates. However, our small N due to attrition between the pre- and post-test does somewhat limit the conclusions we can make from this pilot. Additional efforts need to be undertaken to ensure interventions like these are easy to implement in settings like FQHCs that serve high numbers of patients with health-literacy deficits. The fact that 74% of the initial sample was screened into the video meant for individuals at the lowest level of health literacy (high deficit) provides verification of the need to implement more interventions in this area.
Keywords: colorectal, cancer, screening, health literacy