Integrated Cancer Research Foundation – Kenya
Integrated Cancer Research Foundation - Kenya
Evidence Based Research & Awareness
Promoting Cancer Literacy Online In Sub-Saharan Africa
Every year, more people worldwide and in Kenya are diagnosed with cancer. Receiving a cancer diagnosis is overwhelming and patients and their families need much information and skills to understand the diagnosis, how to live with it, and how to make good decisions. One promising way to share information and improve cancer-related health literacy is through educational interventions.
In the CaLioS research project, we want to better understand the cancer-related health literacy of cancer patients in sub-Saharan Africa and then develop an attractive, engaging and reliable online educational resource (website) based on patients’ lived experience and valid information. This website will support newly diagnosed cancer patients in Kenya to understand the disease and living with it, get new ideas on how to cope and improve their quality of life.
As both women and men are affected by cancer, we will focus on breast cancer and prostate cancer in Kenya for the first two years.
First, we want to learn from you by listening to your experiences, needs, and recommendations. We want to understand the day-to-day needs of cancer patients and their families, and what cancer-related educational opportunities/offers you are already use. We want to know what an online intervention that promotes cancer literacy in Kenya should look like.
No one can tell you better what it means to live with cancer than cancer patients/survivors themselves. That is why we will listen be listening to many people living with cancer as they tell their stories, the difficulties and what has helped them to live with it. We will record the testimonies of breast and prostate cancer patients.
We will make the stories available on a well-designed, reliable website for you and anyone else who wants to learn more about it.
We will invite newly diagnosed cancer patients to use this website to learn about living with cancer. Before and after they use the website, we will ask them to complete a short survey. This will allow us to see if cancer literacy has actually improved.
Lastly, a group of researchers from Sub-Saharan Africa will use all the information and apply for more funding so that we can expand the intervention and learn about patient’s experiences of other diseases in Kenya and Sub-Saharan Africa.
Would you like to help us to join us to develop or evaluate this intervention? This would be great. Please contact us and let us know.
General Information About The Project
Projet Name: CaLioS – Promoting Cancer Literacy Online in Kenya
Principal Investigator: Dr. Stefanie Harsch, Dr. Victor Oria
Organisation: Freiburg University, Centre for Medicine and Society, Integrated Cancer research Foundation of Kenya
Funded by: the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research
Email: stefanie.harsch@zmg.uni-freiburg.de