Despite the availability of effective colorectal cancer (CRC) screening tests and national recommendations for their routine use [1], CRC remains the second leading cause of cancer death in the United States [2]. The CRC burden is particularly heavy in three CRC “hotspots”—regions with elevated CRC mortality rates compared to national averages—including an 11-county region of northeastern North Carolina [3]. National CRC screening rates among adults ages 50–75 years nearly doubled within a 15-year period, up from 34% in 2000 to 62% in 2015 [4]. Disappointingly, screening rates continue to fall short of the national goal of 80% [5].
In North Carolina, as in many parts of the United States, screening rates are particularly low among vulnerable and marginalized populations [6]. The 2018 North Carolina Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey data revealed that 72% of respondents received one or more recommended CRC screenings within the recommended time interval [7]; however, the CRC screening rate was substantially lower—only 43%—among patients served by the state’s community health centers (CHCs) [8]. These findings highlight substantial disparities in CRC screening for the uninsured, underinsured, and medically underserved populations that rely on CHCs for their healthcare.
The United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) recommends several tests to screen for CRC, including colonoscopy and fecal blood tests such as fecal immunochemical testing (FIT), for patients ages 50–75 years [9]. Mailed FIT outreach programs can reduce structural barriers to screening by delivering FITs directly to patients’ homes and providing a prepaid envelope to mail the sample to a lab for analysis. Mailed FIT programs have shown promise as an effective means of increasing CRC screening [10–14], including for vulnerable populations [15, 16]. One study demonstrated that a mailed FIT outreach program could increase screening by nearly 30 percentage points compared to usual care among vulnerable patients in a large, safety net system [15]. Mailed FIT may be particularly appealing to populations for whom screening colonoscopy is difficult to access due to transportation, financial, and other barriers [17–19].
Inadequate follow-up after an abnormal FIT represents a key challenge to effective FIT-based CRC screening. To realize the potential of FIT as a screening modality, it is essential that an abnormal FIT is followed by a diagnostic (follow-up) colonoscopy. Regrettably, research suggests only 52–58% of patients served by CHCs complete a follow-up colonoscopy after a positive FIT result [20–22]. Further, when colonoscopy follow-up is completed, it is sometimes delayed. This finding is disconcerting because delaying follow-up colonoscopy by 6 months or longer has been associated with higher risk of any CRC and advanced-stage disease [23, 24].
One approach to improving follow-up colonoscopy completion is patient navigation. Although activities vary across settings, patient navigation is a barriers-focused intervention that typically includes identifying and addressing patient, provider, and system-level barriers to appropriate healthcare, as well as providing health education and psychosocial support [25, 26]. Mounting evidence supports the efficacy of patient navigation for improving screening colonoscopy completion [10, 27–29], and although it is a promising approach for bolstering follow-up colonoscopy completion after a positive fecal blood test [30, 31], additional research is needed in this area, particularly around implementation and cost-effectiveness [10].
CHCs play critical roles in providing primary health care—including CRC screening—for vulnerable populations in North Carolina. Unfortunately, they face numerous challenges to sustaining a robust CRC screening program, including limited resources [32], lack of time [33], high levels of staff turnover [34], and competing priorities [32]. Further, North Carolina’s CHCs are financially and operationally isolated from one another, and rely on multiple electronic health record (EHR) systems. This taxes already limited resources and requires each CHC to develop, implement, and maintain its own population-based CRC screening and follow-up system.
The intervention to be tested in this trial, Scaling Colorectal Cancer Screening Through Outreach, Referral, and Engagement (SCORE), is a multilevel intervention developed as part of the National Cancer Institute-funded consortium The Accelerating Colorectal Cancer Screening and Follow-up through Implementation Science (ACCSIS) Program. The overall aim of ACCSIS is to conduct multi-site, coordinated, transdisciplinary research to evaluate and improve CRC screening processes using implementation science strategies. The SCORE project supports CRC screening at partner CHCs through the development of a centralized, state-level screening outreach support center that will distribute FIT kits to patients and provide navigation for follow-up colonoscopy following a positive FIT result.
The development and testing of the SCORE project has followed the four phases of the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS) framework [35]. A detailed description of the Exploration and Preparation phases will be published separately. The purpose of the current paper is to describe the study design and protocol for the Implementation phase, during which we are conducting a type 2 hybrid effectiveness-implementation trial to test SCORE’s effectiveness at increasing CRC screening and follow-up rates while also assessing its impact on implementation outcomes [36]. A type 2 hybrid design places equal emphasis on examining both effectiveness and implementation. We selected this design because it is aligned with our research aims to assess both the effectiveness and implementation of a centralized support program for delivering mailed FIT outreach and patient navigation to follow-up colonoscopy. Although prior research has established the effectiveness of mailed FIT at improving CRC screening, little is known about the effectiveness of implementing centralized mailed FIT outreach support or about the effectiveness of patient navigation at improving follow-up for positive FIT results in this context. Further, research on implementation outcomes, including costs, will be important for determining the feasibility of taking SCORE to scale state-wide and sustaining it over time.
Aims
As part of the SCORE trial, we will assess the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and implementation of a centralized support program for delivering mailed FIT outreach and patient navigation to follow-up colonoscopy. We aim to:
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Conduct a multi-site, pragmatic randomized controlled trial to assess the impact of the SCORE intervention on CRC screening outcomes in two CHCs in North Carolina. (effectiveness aim)
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Conduct a multilevel assessment of implementation outcomes and determinants. (implementation and cost-effectiveness aim)