Science Advance: Translation to Practice of an Intervention to Promote Colorectal Cancer Screening Among African Americans
In a previous intervention, ACTSI investigators, Selina Smith, PhD, MDiv and Daniel Blumenthal, MD, MPH demonstrated the efficacy of an intervention to promote colorectal cancer screening among African Americans in a controlled community intervention trial. Participants in the intervention, named EPICS (Educational Program to Increase Colorectal Cancer Screening), were twice as likely to be screened after six months as those in the control group. In the current project, they put the intervention into practice through an academic-health department partnership, and the intervention performed as well as it had in the controlled trial. This success may be due to the community-based participatory methods used in designing and testing the intervention.
The ACTSI investigators are supported by the ACTSI's Community Engagement Research Program (CERP) and the ACTSI community health workers also worked on the project. CERP director, Dr. Blumenthal stated that “the project would not have happened were it not for CTSA support.” The story was featured on the CTSA Consortium website.