Felipe G. Castro - US grants

cocaine; drug abuse therapy; drug addiction; human subject;

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from the author's abstract). This five-year cancer control project, "Companeros en la Salud," features a church-based intervention to promote changes in the areas of diet and women's cancer prevention, that would reduce the risk of cancer among Hispanic women. Centered at the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University and using churches as the unit of analysis, the project entails 12 matched pairs of churches randomized into an experimental and a control group. The investigators hypothesize that the experimental group intervention, a 13-week program led by community women, "consejeras", will affect healthy behavior changes in those churches relative to those in the control group as indicated by (1) a lower consumption of dietary fat, (2) a higher consumption of dietary fiber, (3) a greater frequency of breast self-examination, and (4) a greater proportion of women (a) seeking clinical breast examinations, (b) obtaining mammograms, and (c) obtaining Papanicolaou examinations. A set of secondary analyses will focus on behavior changes at the individual level in order to test a "biphasic curve" hypothesis in which acculturation is related to health status and behavior change among Hispanics. The investigators in this project also seek to identify predictors of compliance and relapse in behavior change efforts that reduce cancer risk among Hispanic women. Additionally, in a binational effort, they will examine patterns of change in a subsample of Hispanic women in Tijuana, Mexico to provide further understanding of the role of cultural, familial, and individual factors as facilitators (or inhibitors) of changes in behavior that are consistent with cancer risk reduction.

DESCRIPTION: (Adapted from the author's abstract). This five-year cancer control project, "Companeros en la Salud," features a church-based intervention to promote changes in the areas of diet and women's cancer prevention, that would reduce the risk of cancer among Hispanic women. Centered at the Graduate School of Public Health at San Diego State University and using churches as the unit of analysis, the project entails 12 matched pairs of churches randomized into an experimental and a control group. The investigators hypothesize that the experimental group intervention, a 13-week program led by community women, "consejeras", will affect healthy behavior changes in those churches relative to those in the control group as indicated by (1) a lower consumption of dietary fat, (2) a higher consumption of dietary fiber, (3) a greater frequency of breast self-examination, and (4) a greater proportion of women (a) seeking clinical breast examinations, (b) obtaining mammograms, and (c) obtaining Papanicolaou examinations. A set of secondary analyses will focus on behavior changes at the individual level in order to test a "biphasic curve" hypothesis in which acculturation is related to health status and behavior change among Hispanics. The investigators in this project also seek to identify predictors of compliance and relapse in behavior change efforts that reduce cancer risk among Hispanic women. Additionally, in a binational effort, they will examine patterns of change in a subsample of Hispanic women in Tijuana, Mexico to provide further understanding of the role of cultural, familial, and individual factors as facilitators (or inhibitors) of changes in behavior that are consistent with cancer risk reduction.