Evaluation of cancer awareness, cancer education, and prevention intervention techniques among university-level students in the United States and India

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death globally. A considerable number of different cancer types may be preventable, using primary intervention techniques, such as health education, cancer awareness, behaviors and lifestyle modifications. The present study conducted a comparative assessment of cancer awareness among undergraduate students of the United States and India. MATERIALS AND METHODS: Students from an Institution in India (KC) (55 females, 33 males), and an Institution in the United States of America (SHU) (226 female, 58 male) during 2019–2020 participated in this study. Participants (n = 372) across all majors and all years (first through fourth year) completed an online questionnaire and answered the questions on their demographic characteristics (e.g., gender, age, and location), academic status (e.g., year of study, major), multiple-choice questions about cancer knowledge, and opinion questions (e.g., “where would you find info,” “should therapies be free”). Student responses were collected using Qualtrics Survey Software. Excel was used to analyze responses. We conducted statistical Χ2 tests for independence to determine whether there is a statistically significant difference between the expected frequencies and the observed frequencies in one or more categories of a contingency table, with a significance of ɑ = 0.01. While small sizes due to the small institutions and the response pool, we note that we achieved the necessary “n” for all tests reported. RESULTS: Our research shows a few important statistically significant differences, including knowledge of cancer and breast lumps is dependent on location, ranking of global cancer deaths is dependent on location, and that cancer knowledge is dependent on the information source. All for Χ2 tests with P < 0.001. CONCLUSIONS: Further encouragement of education for young people in various aspects of cancer and cancer prevention, as well as information facility and sources of reliable data, could be helpful for improving the overall health and primary prevention. A thorough assessment is needed to understand the responsible factors for the observed cancer knowledge variations among students of two different places.