Paired Promotion of Colorectal Cancer and Social Determinants of Health Screening

This work is an implementation science study that examines different aspects of implementing a single intervention. The intervention consists of asking community health centers to implement an outreach strategy to screen patients for colorectal cancer and for social determinants of health in community health centers at the same contact point. These are both clinical targets that the CHCs feel that their patients need and want to offer at a higher rate. The intervention consists of outreach to patients in need of colorectal cancer screening (CRC) to offer fecal immunochemical test (FIT) screening and screening for social determinants of health (SDOH). In this implementation science study, the intervention is an evidence-based intervention being implemented in real-world clinical practice. The intervention is the outreach to offer FIT and SDOH, conducted by clinic staff. Both evidence-based screening activities-FIT and SDOH screening-are used in the practices included in the study but pairing them is intended to increase efficiency and patient-centeredness by addressing health related social needs that may impact patients’ ability to engage in cancer screening. The study aims to test the effect of implementing the intervention on clinical and process outcomes. Clinical outcomes are CRC screening and SDOH screening. Analysis of process outcomes includes measuring what organizational factors influence implementation.