Leveraging Social Media to Increase Lung Cancer Screening Awareness, Knowledge and Uptake in High-Risk Populations

PROJECT SUMMARY/ABSTRACT
Lung cancer screening is recommended by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), has the
potential to detect lung cancer at earlier, more treatable stages. However, population uptake of lung cancer
screening has been abysmal. It has been 7 years since the USPSTF released its official recommendation, yet
less than 5% of screening-eligible Americans have been screened. Screening-eligible individuals are generally
unaware about the option of finding lung cancer early through screening, and our team’s prior work revealed
that in addition to lack of awareness, screening-eligible individuals in the U.S. do not screen – when they are
aware – because of perceived barriers to screening. If high-risk patient populations are not aware that lung
cancer screening exists, then formative work is needed to increase awareness about screening. It is essential
to employ novel community-focused strategies to increase awareness about lung cancer screening to reach
diverse, screening-eligible individuals who might not otherwise learn about the option to screen. Our long term
goal is to increase screening uptake among appropriate, high-risk individuals nationwide. Our overall objective
in this application is to test the effectiveness of: 1) leveraging a social media-based platform to reach
screening-eligible individuals in the community upstream before they engage with the healthcare system, and
2) a novel, tailored health communication and decision support intervention related to lung cancer screening
(LungTalk). Our central hypothesis is two-fold: 1) Facebook targeted advertisement will be a successful
platform to reach high-risk individuals unaware of lung cancer screening; and 2) tailored compared to non-
tailored lung cancer screening information will increase knowledge and improve health beliefs about screening
and subsequent screening uptake. Our study is informed by our prior studies, which led us to consider the
importance of increasing awareness and knowledge on a population level from the screening-eligible
individuals’ perspective as a precursor to health behavior change. Successful use of Facebook to recruit
screening-eligible individuals in our prior studies also led us to consider how social media might be used to
increase awareness of lung cancer screening and as a platform to link the screening-eligible individual with a
tailored health communication and decision support intervention that has the potential to influence screening
behavior and uptake. Using a randomized controlled trial design, we will randomize 500 screening-eligible
individuals recruited through Facebook nationwide to receive either a tailored intervention (LungTalk) or non-
tailored ACS Lung Screening Informational Video. Specific aims are to (1) examine the use of a social media
platform to reach high-risk individuals eligible for lung screening; (2) compare the effectiveness of a computer-
tailored health communication tool to a web-based ACS Lung Screening Informational Video to improve lung
cancer screening: a) knowledge; b) health beliefs; and c) screening uptake and completion in a high-risk
population; and (3) Explore the sustainability of a social media-based approach among key stakeholders.

Grant Number: 4R01CA263662-05
NIH Institute/Center: NIH
Principal Investigator: Lisa Carter-Bawa