Inter-agency collaboration: teaching breast self-examination to black women

Excessive breast cancer mortality and limited use of mammography among black women point to a need for breast cancer education and increased use of breast self-examination (BSE) and other screening procedures. The Illinois Cancer Council (ICC), a consortial comprehensive cancer center, and the Chicago Chapter of the National Black Nurses' Association (CCNBNA) developed and piloted an educational project to increase black women's knowledge about breast cancer and their use of BSE and other screening methods. This paper describes the steps leading up to this collaborative effort, the procedures necessary to implement it, the difficulties encountered, and the impact of the educational program on the CCNBNA nurses and the high risk, hard-to-reach, underserved women who participated. This program is offered as a model for a collaborative effort between a cancer center or other healthcare facility and a professional organization to address unmet community health needs.