Development of a cancer camp for adult Spanish-speaking survivors: lessons learned from Camp Alegria.

BACKGROUND: The serious psychosocial and emotional side effects of cancer and its treatment negatively affect the lives of breast cancer survivors. METHODS: Camp Alegria, in 2005, was the first oncology camp offered to Latina breast cancer survivors. This 3-day camp (N = 58 women) provided a culturally and linguistically relevant program that empowered Spanish-speaking women diagnosed with breast cancer and gave them an opportunity to gain support from other cancer survivors facing similar challenges. RESULTS: Process evaluation results illustrate high satisfaction with the overall program, format, educational and recreational activities. CONCLUSION: This paper describes the camp development, experiences, and lessons learned.

Impacting health disparities through community outreach: utilizing the CLEAN look (culture, literacy, education, assessment, and networking).

BACKGROUND: Community outreach programs are important vehicles for reducing the discovery-delivery disconnect by bringing cancer education and screening services directly to community members. Such programs are consistent with the priority areas of the Department of Health and Human Services' initiatives for reducing health disparities by 2010, and they support the use of culturally, linguistically, and literacy-specific approaches for eliminating cancer health disparities. METHODS: This article reviews the important tenets of culture and literacy when developing community outreach programs for medically underserved populations, examines a health education empowerment model for community program planning, and describes the use of the CLEAN Look Checklist (in which CLEAN is an easy-to-remember mnemonic of culture, literacy, education, assessment, and networking) for identifying cues and strategies to achieve relevant outreach. RESULTS: This article illustrates the application of this approach with an example of outreach strategies for reaching at-risk Haitian American women in our community. CONCLUSIONS: Meeting the challenge of a strong health disparities agenda requires integration of cultural and literacy considerations in outreach program, message, and intervention development. The use of a checklist may help clinicians, educators, and researchers create a sustainable model of community outreach guided by a paradigm that incorporates a multilevel approach to address cancer outcomes for disenfranchised populations.

Distance learning for communicating cancer, culture, and literacy: a model for cancer control advancement.

BACKGROUND: Successful cancer control communications and research must reflect an understanding and appreciation of the importance of cultural, linguistic, and literacy needs of diverse audiences. The Cancer, Culture and Literacy Institute, a National Cancer Institute-funded R25 educational project, blends traditional learning approaches with distance learning methodologies to reach demographically dispersed cancer control researchers with new knowledge and skills on culture and literacy. We report here the distance learning component of the project. METHODS: A Web-based learning management system was developed that consisted of three elements: (1) educational modules, (2) communications, and (3) resources. RESULTS: Results from 64 doctorally prepared participants demonstrated high satisfaction with the content, high usefulness of materials, and very good to excellent stimulation of thinking. CONCLUSIONS: Distance learning offers a promising and appealing vehicle for communicating cancer control skills, interventions, and best practices, and thus has the potential to impact the appropriateness of cancer communications, research, and education.

The longer you stay, the bigger you get: length of time and language use in the U.S. are associated with obesity in Puerto Rican women.

This cross-sectional study examined whether length of time in the U.S., language use, and birthplace (proxy measures of acculturation) were associated with body mass index (BMI) and obesity in a sample of 174 low-income Puerto Rican women from Hartford, Connecticut. The mean BMI for the total sample (N = 174) was 27.39 (S.D. = 5.07), and nearly 34% of the sample was considered obese (BMI > or = 30). There was a statistically significant increase in BMI with length of time in the U.S. (P = 0.012) and these differences were even greater among women born in Puerto Rico (P = 0.003). Moreover, obesity prevalence was highest among women who had been in the U.S. for 10 years or more (40%), as compared to those who had been in the U.S. less than 1 year (29%; P = 0.045). There were no statistically significant associations between language and BMI for the total sample. However, among bilingual speakers born in Puerto Rico, there were significant differences in BMI according to their level of English fluency. Those who spoke fluent or very good English had a significantly higher BMI (mean = 29.72; SD = 4.12) than women whose English was good to not-so-good (mean = 26.8; SD = 5.24; P = 0.016). The findings from this study point to the need for more research on the acculturation process and obesity, in order to design culturally tailored obesity prevention programs.