Deaf Community Cancer Information Diffusion Strategies

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The Deaf and Hard of Hearing community (DHHC) experiences barriers to health services similar to other minority communities. Early hearing loss creates a strong cultural affinity, a unique language (American Sign Language), and a diminished access to health information and care. The DHHC is widely dispersed and 90% of its members are born into hearing families, making it even more difficult to reach its individuals with health information. A Partnership since 1997 of UCSD Cancer Center, Deaf Community Services of San Diego, Inc., Gallaudet University, and Bovee Productions, has created/tested a cancer education program to improve the DHHC's access to health information and has made the services available statewide. The program consists of ASL cancer education videos with open captioning and voice overlay. This proposal seeks to expand the number of such videos and to test dissemination strategies designed to take the program nationwide, including national partnerships with deaf ministries, DHHC service agencies, American Cancer Society's regional offices, CIS offices, and the National Association of the Deafs Captioned Media Program. Videos will also be digitized, segmented into question and answer dyads, and mounted on the Cancer Center's website for round-the-clock access by the DHHC. E-social marketing strategies will be evaluated to promote website use. To draw the DHHC's attention to this and other health websites, the Partnership will also test webcast program prototypes to give the DHHC access to the same level of information that the hearing community gets through radio talk shows. As the Partnership hones the algorithms that allow ASL's fine motor movements to be webcast clearly, the Partnership will offer archived, digitized, streaming webcast videos of the prototypes. Proposed evaluation strategies have already been tested, including new software to assess Internet access, survey data from partnering distribution agencies, geographic tracking software, and demonstrations at health care providers' and DHHC's national meetings.