Motivating Underserved Vietnamese Americans to Obtain Colorectal Cancer Screening: Evaluation of a Culturally Tailored DVD Intervention

Abstract

<b>Background:</b> Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer death among Vietnamese Americans, yetscreening remains underutilized. We investigated the effectiveness of a culturally tailored DVD intervention inpromoting CRC screening among unscreened Vietnamese Americans age 50 and over. Materials and <br/><b>Methods</b>:Using a community-based participatory research approach, we conducted a trial comparing twenty-eightsubjects who received a mailed DVD in Vietnamese, with twenty-eight subjects who received a mailed brochurein Vietnamese. Subjects completed telephone surveys at baseline, One-month, and one-year. The primaryoutcome was receipt of screening. Secondary measures were participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs aboutCRC screening. Two focus groups explored the intervention’s acceptability and effectiveness. <br/><b>Results</b>: At oneyear, CRC screening rates of 57.1% and 42.9% were observed in experimental and control group respectively(p=0.42), Subjects in both groups showed increased knowledge about CRC after one month. Focus group findingsrevealed that the DVD was an effective method of communicating information and would help promote screening.<br/><b>Conclusions</b>: The findings suggest that culturally tailored, linguistically appropriate content is more importantthan the type of media used. This relatively low intensity, low cost intervention utilizing a DVD can be anotheruseful method for outreach to the often hard-to-reach unscreened population.