UT Public Health seminars at UTB-TSC

Public health graduate students and professors attended a lecture on colon cancer screening promotion on Friday as part of the weekly Hispanic Health Seminar series at the University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College.

The lecture was presented by Dr. Sally Vernon, director of the Division of Health Promotion and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston. The lecture was titled: "A tailored interactive intervention to promote colon cancer screenings. Sometimes more is just the same."

Vernon's seminar discussed the findings of a study she and her colleagues conducted to test whether different intervention techniques would cause subjects to get colon cancer screenings.

The presentation inspired students to ask questions about how Vernon conducted her study. The study hypothesized that patients, who explored a tailored interactive Web site about the benefits of colon cancer screenings, would be more likely to be screened than those who simply answered a survey or went to a standard Web site.

Vernon's results were null, since there was no significant difference in the findings from the three groups studied.

Colon cancer is the second leading cause of cancer deaths in the United States.

The UT School of Public Health's Brownsville campus was established in 2000 with a goal to "improve health and prevent disease in the population of the Lower Rio Grande Valley by developing local research and professional capacity and by the integration of teaching and research within the community," according to the school's Web site.

"We want to provide a scientific forum for discussion and academic insight," said Sue Fisher-Hoch, a professor with the Brownsville campus of the UT Schools of Public Health.

For more information about the weekly seminars, contact Fisher-Hoch at (956) 882-5167.