Institute for Health Informatics, University of Minnesota, 516 Delaware Street SE, Suite 8-110, Minneapolis, MN, 55455, USA.
Sage Programs, Minnesota Department of Health, St. Paul, MN, 55164, USA.
Cancer Causes Control. 2023 Jul;34(7):625-633. doi: 10.1007/s10552-023-01704-z. Epub 2023 May 3.
Nationally, women of African heritage die at higher rates from breast cancer than women of other races or ethnicities. We developed Breast Cancer Champions (BCC) a peer-to-peer education program, which recruited 12 women and deployed them into the community in August 2020 during the height of the COVID pandemic. BCC aims to improve breast cancer screening rates for women of African heritage through peer-to-peer education, which has proven successful for addressing cancer-related health disparities.
BCC community experts, or "Champions," are peer-to-peer educators that conduct awareness and screening events in their communities. Champion's education activities were tracked by bi-weekly check-in calls, which recorded the activity type, location, and the number of participants for each event. We used spatial and statistical analyses to determine the efficacy of the program at increasing screening rates for women within the area of Champion activity versus women outside of their activity area.
Over 15 months, Champions conducted 245 in-person or online events to engage women in their community for screening. More women of African heritage were screened in areas Champions were active during the intervention compared to historical data comparing areas outside of the Champion activity in the prior 15 months (X = 3.0845, p = 0.079).
BCC successes could be attributed to pivoting to online community building when in-person events were restricted and enabling Champions to design and conduct their own events, which increased outreach possibilities. We demonstrate improved screening outcomes associated with an updated peer-to-peer education program.
在全国范围内，非裔美国女性因乳腺癌而死亡的比率高于其他种族或族裔的女性。我们开发了 Breast Cancer Champions（乳腺癌冠军），这是一个同伴教育计划，于 2020 年 8 月在 COVID-19 大流行期间招募了 12 名女性并将其部署到社区中。BCC 旨在通过同伴教育提高非裔美国女性的乳腺癌筛查率，这种方法已被证明对解决与癌症相关的健康差异非常有效。
BCC 的社区专家，即“冠军”，是同伴教育者，他们在社区中开展宣传和筛查活动。冠军的教育活动通过每两周一次的电话检查来跟踪，记录活动类型、地点和每次活动的参与者人数。我们使用空间和统计分析来确定该计划在提高冠军活动区域内女性的筛查率方面的效果，以及与冠军活动区域外的女性相比。
在 15 个月的时间里，冠军们进行了 245 次面对面或在线活动，以吸引社区中的女性进行筛查。与前 15 个月外的冠军活动区域外的历史数据相比，在干预期间冠军活跃的区域内有更多的非裔美国女性接受了筛查（X = 3.0845，p = 0.079）。
BCC 的成功可以归因于在限制面对面活动时转向在线社区建设，并使冠军能够设计和开展自己的活动，从而增加了外联的可能性。我们展示了与更新的同伴教育计划相关的改进的筛查结果。
