Are Patient Educational Materials on Cancer Screening More Effective When Co-created with Patients?

We have received funding from the Ontario Institute for Cancer Research to examine whether patient educational materials on cancer screening are more effective when co-created with patients.

Research shows that the harms of screening for prostate cancer with the prostate-specific antigen (PSA) test outweigh the benefits. Yet men remain confused about the harms and benefits of PSA screening, and 560,000 Ontario men undergo PSA screening each year. This may be in part because patient educational materials on cancer screening are typically developed by researchers and clinicians and may not address patient barriers to following evidence-based screening recommendations.

We are therefore assessing whether a patient educational material on PSA screening that is co-created with patients provides added value over (a) educational materials developed primarily by clinicians and researchers and (b) guideline recommendations that are disseminated without accompanying patient educational materials.

Through this study, we will generate a patient educational material on PSA screening to help patients make more evidence-based screening decisions. The results of the project will also help guideline developers and health care organizations identify optimal methods for developing patient educational materials for PSA screening and other areas of preventive health care, such as breast and colorectal cancer screening.