Prostate Cancer Ambassadors: Enhancing a Theory-Informed Training Program for Informed Decision-Making.

J Cancer Educ

Campus-Community Partnerships for Health, P.O. Box 12124, Raleigh, NC, 27605, USA.

Published: September 2017

Despite the high burden of prostate cancer in African American communities, there is a paucity of knowledge about prostate health. This paper describes the enhancement of a curriculum for training lay health advisors, called prostate cancer ambassadors, on informed decision-making for prostate cancer screening. Adult learning theory informed the structuring of the training sessions to be interactive, self-directed, and engaging. Trainings were developed in a manner that made the material relevant to the learners and encouraged co-learning. The research team developed strategies, such as using discussions and interactive activities, to help community members weigh the pros and cons of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) screening and to make an informed decision about screening. Furthermore, activities were developed to bolster four social cognitive theory constructs: observational learning, self-efficacy for presenting information to the community and for making an informed decision themselves, collective efficacy for presenting information to the community, and outcome expectations from those presentations. Games, discussions, and debates were included to make learning fun and encourage discovery. Practice sessions and team-building activities were designed to build self-efficacy for sharing information about informed decision-making. Topics added to the original curriculum included updates on prostate cancer screening, informed decision-making for screening, skills for being a lay health advisor, and ethics. This dynamic model and approach to lay health advisor (ambassador) training is flexible: while it was tailored for use with prostate cancer education, it can be adjusted for use with other types of cancer and even other diseases.

Download full-text PDF

Source
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4889563PMC
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s13187-015-0955-4DOI Listing

Publication Analysis

Top Keywords

prostate cancer
24
informed decision-making
16
lay health
12
cancer ambassadors
8
cancer screening
8
screening informed
8
informed decision
8
presenting community
8
health advisor
8
prostate
7

Similar Publications

Want AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?

Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!