Cancer prevention among rural youth: building a "bridge" to better health with genealogy.
BACKGROUND
The Bridge to Better Health (BRIDGE) project is a program that focuses on providing rural high school youth with motivation, knowledge, and skills essential to cancer prevention. In this pilot intervention, we used instruction in personal health genealogy as a means of increasing awareness and knowledge of health risk and motivation to change several screening and cancer-related behaviors.


METHODS
We administered a Bridge to Better Health survey to 173 ninth- and 10th-grade students from a rural Southeastern Virginia high school before and after delivery of the BRIDGE pilot intervention.


RESULTS
Significant preintervention to postintervention changes were observed for general genealogy knowledge, personal health genealogy, self-efficacy, and intention to practice self-examinations (breast, testicular, and skin) and eating a high-fiber and low-fat diet.


CONCLUSIONS
These project results demonstrate the importance of theory-driven interventions for increasing cancer knowledge and changing cancer-related dietary and screening behaviors.
Harmon
A Lisa
AL
Department of Psychology, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, 23284, USA. harmonal@vcu.edu
Westerberg
Alice L
AL
Bond
Dale S
DS
Hoy
Kristyn N
KN
Fries
Elizabeth A
EA
Danish
Steven J
SJ
D000293:Adolescent; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education / Q000379:methods*; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009369:Neoplasms / Q000517:prevention & control*; D010375:Pedigree; D012424:Rural Population