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

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

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.

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.

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.