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Cancer Control Research

Abstract

Long-term Objectives: In 1981 it was reported that 35% of cancer mortality in the USA can be attributed to diet (Doll and Peto, 1981), but nutrition education health-care professionals has remained woefully inadequate. The University of North Carolina developing an interactive multimedia course (eight modules) on Nutrition in Medicine for medical students. Over 70 US medical schools have adopted the UNC series; probably all 130 will be using it soon. UNC raised $2 million to produce this software ($450,000 from the National Cancer Institute, the rest from other foundations). This budget only allows UNC to produce versions for medical students; Interactive Information Incorporated will modify this series to produce versions for practicing health-care providers, their patients, undergraduates, and the public. Specific Aims: During Phase I, the company will modify one module --- Nutrition and Cancer --- for practing nurses, adding: new content (e.g. social contexts for eating behavior, lifestyle barriers to changing such behaviors), new video, and new art: this modification process will include formative evaluation during development, efficacy testing of prototype, and testing of information transfer methods. Technological Innovation: The UNC curriculum on Nutrition in Medicine, is the first of its kind, a comprehensive core course, interactive multimedia form, designed to teach this increasingly important topic to medical students. All health-care providers need this information; i2i will deliver it. POTENTIAL COMMERcial APPLICATIONS The company will develop a commercial version of the Cancer and Nutrition module tailored to fit the nursing market -- consisting of the 2,000,000 practing nurses in the USA, most of whom require continuing education (CE) to sustain a license to practice. Most institutions that employ nurses (hospitals, HMOs, and the like) pay for staff CE. Disks will be sold to individuals; site licenses, to institution When bandwidth is expanded to accommodate the program's sophisticated video transmission, the course will be delivered via the internet.