Recruitment,Retention,and Activity of Volunteers Promoting Mammography Use in Rural Communitites

Abstract

As of a community mammography promotion, the authors recruited volunteers in rural communities to conduct intervention activities. Volunteers were trained to promote mammography use among the women in their community using a variety of community activities and/or barrier-specific telephone counseling (BSTC). As prior research on BSTC has suggested that it is a particularly effective means of screening promotion, the authors were interested in determining whether volunteers could be recruited and trained to be effective counselors. The results of this analysis suggest that recruiting volunteers for BSTC is not more difficult than recruitment of volunteers for more traditional community activities, but that special efforts may be required to retain volunteers doing BSTC and to encourage their activity. Overall, the use of community volunteers for mammography promotion in rural areas is possible, and volunteers using either intervention strategy may be able to increase screening use.