EVALUATING THE CANCER INFORMATION-SERVICE - A MODEL FOR HEALTH COMMUNICATIONS - PART 1

The Cancer Information Service (CIS) was established in 1975 by the Na tional Cancer Institute (NCI) to meet the information needs of cancer patients, their families, health professionals, and the public. As the nation's foremost source for cancer information, the CIS applies a un ique health communications model to bring the latest research findings on cancer prevention, detection, treatment, and supportive care to th e nation. It does this through two main program components: a toll-fre e telephone service (1-800-4-CANCER) and an outreach program that focu ses on providing technical assistance, specifically to partners reachi ng minority and underserved audiences. During its 22-year history, mor e than 7.5 million callers have reached the CIS telephone service. In addition, 100,000 requests are received each year fr om 4,500 organiza tions nationwide seeking cancer-related outreach expertise. This overv iew describes the CIS model for health communications, describes the p rogram's impact in broad terms, and defines the critical role evaluati on plays in each program component. The overview describes two custome r satisfaction and impact surveys performed by an independent survey r esearch film in 1996 to evaluate the CIS model: (a) the telephone serv ice user survey, a random sample of 2,489 persons representing major c aller groups who were interviewed 3 to 6 weeks after their initial cal l to the CIS; and (b) the outreach partner survey, a random sample of 867 partner organizations, the majority of which reach minority and un derserved audiences with information and programs, surveyed within a f ew months after a contact with the CIS outreach program. Impact data f or both program areas were favorable: Approximately 8 out of IO CIS ca llers reported that the information they received had a positive Impac t (either in eliciting a positive action [56%] or in reassurance of de cisions made [22%]) and two-thirds of CIS partners said the CIS has an important impact on their programs.