Motivating Underserved Vietnamese Americans to Obtain Colorectal Cancer Screening: Evaluation of a Culturally Tailored DVD Intervention

Background: Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a leading cause of cancer death among Vietnamese Americans, yetscreening remains underutilized. We investigated the effectiveness of a culturally tailored DVD intervention inpromoting CRC screening among unscreened Vietnamese Americans age 50 and over. Materials and
Methods:Using a community-based participatory research approach, we conducted a trial comparing twenty-eightsubjects who received a mailed DVD in Vietnamese, with twenty-eight subjects who received a mailed brochurein Vietnamese. Subjects completed telephone surveys at baseline, One-month, and one-year. The primaryoutcome was receipt of screening. Secondary measures were participants’ knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs aboutCRC screening. Two focus groups explored the intervention’s acceptability and effectiveness.
Results: At oneyear, CRC screening rates of 57.1% and 42.9% were observed in experimental and control group respectively(p=0.42), Subjects in both groups showed increased knowledge about CRC after one month. Focus group findingsrevealed that the DVD was an effective method of communicating information and would help promote screening.
Conclusions: The findings suggest that culturally tailored, linguistically appropriate content is more importantthan the type of media used. This relatively low intensity, low cost intervention utilizing a DVD can be anotheruseful method for outreach to the often hard-to-reach unscreened population.