New York
State Cancer Control Plan Spawns Successful Projects Relating to Skin, Prostate, and Colorectal Cancers
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Public Health Problem
The New York State Comprehensive Cancer Control Plan (NYSCCCP), now in its second year of implementation, is making great strides toward mobilizing partnerships and fostering collaborations to ultimately reduce the burden of cancer in New York State. NYSCCCP must use existing resources and develop collaborative
partnerships to address cancer control within a state population that is geographically, ethnically, racially, and linguistically diverse. The approaches employed by NYSCCCP must be evaluated on an ongoing basis to determine which are effective for different subpopulations.
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Program Example
NYSCCCP has begun implementing projects relating to skin, prostate, and colorectal
cancers. In the area of skin cancer, NYSCCCP implemented the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency's SunWise School Program in kindergarten through second-grade
classrooms in Tompkins County in the spring of 2003. This program reached 1,500
students in 88 classrooms and resulted in statistically significant, positive
changes in knowledge, attitudes, and behaviors relating to sun protection.
The SunWise program is now being implemented in Suffolk County; approximately
45 teachers have been trained under a train-the-trainer format and will bring
the program to an estimated 5,000 kindergarten through third-grade students.
In the spring of 2005, the state legislature considered a bill that would require
schools to provide sun safety education. Although this bill, which cited the
SunWise program, has not yet been enacted, it shows the increasing attention
that legislators are giving to sun safety in New York.
NYSCCCP's prostate cancer project has used social marketing techniques
to develop a culturally and linguistically appropriate media campaign for
use in Brooklyn, New York, specifically the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood.
The campaign, which began during Men's Health Week in June 2005, focuses
on African-American men, encouraging them to talk to their doctors about prostate
cancer and prostate cancer screening. Four initial focus groups were held to
determine what types of campaigns might be successful. Then potential campaign
messages and strategies were developed, and the resulting materials were taken
back to the focus groups to obtain their thoughts about which message and format
would be most successful in their community.
In a partnership undertaken to leverage the strengths of the state department
of health and an external organization, NYSCCCP and the New York State Cancer
Services Program (CSP) partnered with Independent Health, a managed care organization,
to promote colorectal cancer screening in Western New York. An educational CD-ROM
developed by the National Colorectal Cancer Research Alliance and the Centers
for Disease Control and Prevention's Screen for Life fact sheet were
distributed to 14,000 beneficiaries of Independent Health aged 50 years or older
who were not in compliance with recommended screening guidelines for colorectal
cancer. These materials were also distributed to 1,179 health care providers
who served Independent Health beneficiaries.
NYSCCCP and CSP provided the resources for this project including evaluation
development and support, and Independent Health conducted the mailings. Independent
Health also encouraged the providers who received the materials to use them
in their practices and to respond to an evaluation questionnaire sent by NYSCCCP
and CSP.
The results of the questionnaire to date indicate that the CD-ROM was generally
thought to be useful, comprehensive, clinically accurate, and easy to navigate.
By providing the materials to patients as well as providers, the intervention
encouraged the development of patient-provider partnerships that could enable
patients to make appropriate decisions regarding screening for colorectal cancer.
This intervention also gave the state an opportunity to assess the feasibility
and usefulness of distributing a CD-ROM for public health education about cancer
screening.
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Contact Information
Comprehensive Cancer Control Program*
Division of Chronic Disease Prevention and Adult Health
New York State Department of Health
Empire State Plaza
Corning Tower, Room 515
Albany,
NY 12237-0675
(518) 474-3276
Fax: (518) 473-2853
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