BREAST CANCER EDUCATION IN NORTH MANHATTAN

DESCRIPTION: (Applicant's Description) The proposed program seeks to enhance knowledge regarding breast cancer, focusing on its prevention, screening, and treatment. This educational program will be conducted in two New York City communities serving minority populations, Harlem and Washington Heights\Inwood. It will build on the Upper Manhattan Physicians Against Cancer, a network of 113 primary care physicians (82 percent of the total) serving these two communities with whom we have educational ties. This program will have two parts, one focused on the physicians themselves and the other on their patient population. The program for the physicians will utilize the techniques of "academic detailing" which we have previously explored and with which we have had great success. Each physician will be "detailed" two to three times each year by one of our M.D. or non-M.D. detailers, as needed, and at that time, materials and information regarding breast cancer will be given and any questions or further information provided as per the physician's request. In addition, we will have several evening didactic workshops with dinner served, and a series of evening dinners with ten to 12 physicians and two or three M.D. discussants of various aspects of breast cancer. A newsletter on breast cancer, prepared by the physicians themselves, will also be distributed four times each year. After two years, we will assess the impact of the physician intervention on knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs of physicians regarding breast cancer and we will estimate the extent of breast cancer screening in their patient populations. In the next two years we will utilize two health educators who will be trained and then sit in each physician's office for a week at a time, twice a year, to make contact with women over the age of 40 to educate them on a one-to one basis regarding breast cancer risks, the need for screening, and to dispel myths regarding breast cancer surgery or treatment. In this way, we hope to make contact with 10,000 or more of these primarily Hispanic and African-American women. We will continue academic detailing during this period as well. Surveys will then be taken again of the physicians and a sample of the patient population to assess the impact of this program and to assist in making modification.