Dissemination of Cervical Cancer Screening to Primary Care Physicians in Underserved Communities

Columbia University

Status and phase: Terminated; Phase 4

Conditions: Cervical Cancer

Treatments: Behavioral: Academic Detailing

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; Other U.S. Federal agency

Identifiers

NCT00629993

U57/CCU224079

AAAA9722

Details and patient eligibility

About

Primary care physicians have an important role to play in the delivery of cancer prevention and detection services to patients. Face-to-face counseling of physicians, called academic detailing, involves a brief and focused intervention, modeled on the practices of pharmaceutical companies. This type of intervention may increase physicians' attention to preventive opportunities and increase their screening behaviors.

Full description

The specific aims of this proposal are:

1. To test the hypothesis that an intervention, multi-component academic detailing, will increase the rate of physician cervical cancer screening at 3- and 6-months post-randomization, compared to the rate observed in a service-as-usual control.
2. To develop models predicting which physician offices are most and least likely to adopt the intervention, and to generate hypotheses about tailoring the dissemination of cervical cancer screening guidelines to different physician subgroups.
3. To conduct a cost-effectiveness analysis comparing the incremental societal costs and effects (in lives saved, life-years saved, and quality-of-life-years saved) of the cervical cancer intervention implemented in physicians' offices.

The long-term goal of this project therefore is to reduce cervical cancer risks among ethnic and racial minorities, by influencing the screening behaviors of their primary care physicians.

Enrollment: 282 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 18 to 85 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Charts of female patients age 18-85 with at least one visit to the primary care provider over the last two years will be reviewed

Exclusion criteria

• Exclusion criteria will include: diagnosis of cancer other than non-melanotic skin cancer and removal of the uterus.

Trial design

Primary purpose: Screening

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Triple Blind

---

282 participants in 1 patient group

Multi-component Academic Detailing

Experimental group

Description:

Multi-component, academic detailing regarding ACS guidelines on cervical cancer screening approaches. Includes an interactive, digitized CD-ROM, focused on the discussion of risks and benefits, screening options or alternatives, values clarification, and mutual decision-making, alongside patient education materials designed for low literacy patients.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Academic Detailing