Salud es Vida: Reducing Access Barriers to Cervical Cancer Screening Among Unders

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Research has highlighted the higher incidence, prevalence, and mortality rates of cervical cancer among Hispanic women (Latinas) compared to non-Hispanic whites in the US. Effective community-based interventions are needed to address these health disparities, but the development of such interventions are limited by gaps in our understanding of: 1) cultural beliefs toward cervical cancer and HPV; and 2) effective intervention programs targeting specific priority populations, such as Latina farmworkers. The overall objective of this application is to develop an effective, culturally appropriate cervical cancer prevention intervention for low-income, Mexican farmworkers in southeast Georgia. The central hypothesis is that a multi-component intervention delivered by a trained, bilingual health educator targeted to low-income, Latina farmworkers will be more effective in increasing cervical cancer screening when compared to a media-only control condition. The rationale that underlies the proposed research is that interventions using trained health educators are a culturally appropriate, effective strategy for increasing cervical cancer screening in rural Latina populations. The two specific aims are to: (1) develop a multi-component health educator intervention, which is informed by ethnographic research on knowledge, attitudes, beliefs, and risk perceptions for cervical cancer and HPV, and screening behaviors among low-income, Mexican farmworker women; and (2) assess the relative efficacy of the multi-component health educator intervention for increasing the rate of cervical cancer screening among Mexican farmworker women who are non-users of cervical cancer screening when compared to a control condition. The contribution of the proposed research is expected to be the development of an effective and innovative multi-component intervention, which will consist of health-educator-led small group education sessions using an animated video and a flipchart, to increase cervical cancer screening among rural, Latina immigrants. The proposed research is innovative because a new multi-component intervention program will be developed and delivered by a health educator and targeted to a new immigrant Latino farmworker population in rural, underserved southern Georgia.