A collaborative study including Mr. Brandon Wilcher, Mr. Wayne Lawrence, Ms. Heather Guerreso, and Mr. Jarrett Johnson, graduate students in the Jiann-Ping Hsu College of Public Health at Georgia Southern University examined the Impact of an Educational Video on Prostate Cancer Knowledge among African-American Men. The students and their faculty mentor, Dr. Levi Ross, presented the research findings at the 2015 Xavier University of Louisiana College of Pharmacy, Center for Minority Health and Health Disparities, Research and Education Eighth Health Disparities Conference where they received the Graduate Student Poster Award. The award is to acknowledge their outstanding contribution to the elimination of racial/ethnic health disparities and achievement of health equity.

Their research illustrated the usefulness of a video intervention to promote prostate cancer prevention and control knowledge among African-American men in community settings. It also demonstrated that racial concordance between researchers and participants facilitates the collection of sensitive health information from individuals that have traditionally been labeled as “hard-to-reach.”

When conducting educational outreach in a group format, community health educators face the challenge of finding resources that are comprehensible to audience members with different demographic characteristics. The team’s study results add to the research base which shows that education delivered in an audio-visual format is suitable for adult learners in middle-aged and older age groups.