NIH awards $3M grant to VCU Massey Cancer Center to develop test to measure health literacy of cancer patients

Feb 27 2010

The National Institutes of Health has awarded the Virginia Commonwealth Massey Cancer Center a National Cancer Institute grant totaling nearly $3 million to develop a standardized test to measure health literacy among cancer patients.

The four-year grant will be led by Levent Dumenci, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Health in the VCU School of Medicine and the founding director of Behavioral Measure Core Facility at the VCU Massey Cancer Center. Dumenci is collaborating with Robin K. Matsuyama, Ph.D., assistant professor of social and behavioral health in the VCU School of Medicine, and Laura A. Siminoff, Ph.D., professor and chair of the VCU Department of Social and Behavioral Health and associate director for Prevention and Control at Massey.

To develop the test, Dumenci, Matsuyama and Siminoff will identify cancer patients who need help and extra support to handle the complexities of their medical care at the time of diagnosis and better assist them as they go through treatment. This measure would be the first health literacy measure designed specifically for cancer patients.

"Recent research shows that individuals with low health literacy are more likely to have limited knowledge about cancer screening, and it is a contributing factor to insufficient utilization of preventive health services. We hope that the test we develop will help identify cancer patients with inadequate levels of health literacy so that they receive the help they need in a timely manner," said Dumenci.

Dumenci has a distinguished publication record on test development, multimethod measurement, statistical modeling of behavior and measurement of change.