Leveraging Multi-Sectoral Partnership for Colorectal Cancer Education and Screening in the African American Community: A Protocol and Preliminary Results

Colorectal cancer (CRC) awareness and screening rates are still low in African Americans (AAs), especially for those who do not have regular access to health care. We established a multi-sector community partnership between academia, health system, cancer advocacy, and local county treasurer's office (CTO), to test a pilot CRC screening intervention using a tailored educational brochure and fecal immunochemical test (FIT). Participants were recruited at a local CTO in an urban midwestern region. Once eligible, participants were assigned to 2-by-2 intervention arms by educational strategy (brochure vs. no brochure) and FIT provision strategy (direct provision by onsite staff vs. indirect provision via phone/online request). We compared the effect of different strategies on FIT return rates. Of 1500 individuals approached, 212 were eligible for the study. The final sample consisted of 209 participants who were predominantly men (57%) and AAs (85%). No differences were found in the return rates by educational brochure (24% [brochure] vs. 23% [no brochure]; p = 0.82). In regard to FIT provision strategy, direct FIT provision yielded higher return rates than indirect provision (31% vs. 15%; p = 0.01). When the four groups were compared, direct provision with education brochure yielded the highest return rates (33.9%), followed by direct provision only (27.5%), indirect provision only (18%), and indirect provision with a brochure (12.2%). For community-based CRC screening intervention using stool-based test, the direct provision of FIT kits with educational brochure outperforms the other three strategies.