Faith in Action! A Church-Based Navigation Model to Increase Breast Cancer Screening in Korean Women

The purpose of this research is to develop a culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum to train lay health navigators to provide breast cancer screening navigation to Korean American women within faith-based settings and evaluate whether the culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum increases adherence to breast cancer screening guidelines among Korean American women within faith-based settings in Los Angeles, California. The primary research procedures include trainings and key informant interviews with lay health navigators in faith-based settings followed by a cluster randomized trial to evaluate the intervention.

A parallel cluster randomized trial (CRT) with staggered roll-out will be conducted to evaluate the efficacy of the "Faith in Action!" intervention on breast cancer screening rates among Korean American women. This will involve two blocks of 8 churches each (total 16 churches) randomized to either the intervention or waitlist control.

A train the trainer approach will be used to educate and certify lay health navigators identified by targeted Korean church leaders from selected churches. The trained health navigators will be deployed back to the churches and community settings with tools and resources to deliver cancer education and increase motivation to participate in breast cancer screening through proven approaches such as one-on-one education, small media and workshops.

The research objectives are to:

1. Develop a culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum to train lay health navigators to provide breast cancer screening navigation to Korean American women within faith-based settings.
2. Evaluate whether the culturally adapted "Faith in Action!" curriculum increases adherence to breast cancer screening guidelines among Korean American women within faith-based settings.

It is hypothesized that the implementation of this culturally adapted cancer screening training curriculum for lay health navigators, built upon the Korean communities' frequent engagement with "expert" schools and deployed among existing networks in the faith-based Korean community, will increase adherence to breast cancer screening guidelines among underserved Korean American women.