Leveraging NCI-Designated Cancer Centers’ Community Outreach and Engagement Infrastructure to Advance Community-Driven Priorities Related to the Social Determinants of Health: Feasibility and Preliminary Efficacy of a Financial Literacy Educational Intervention

As part of the Community Outreach and Engagement mission, NCI-designated cancer centers bring important infrastructure related to community-based participatory research and community partnerships that can be leveraged to advance financial well-being as part of their mission to improve cancer population health. As a result, cancer centers offer unique opportunities for financial literacy interventions to address this important social determinant of health. We designed the Rise Up With Roswell intervention, a community-responsive financial literacy education intervention. The goal of this study was to test the feasibility and preliminary efficacy of the Rise Up with Roswell intervention. We partnered with community-based organizations to deliver the Rise Up with Roswell intervention. To understand feasibility, we examined the number of people reached, the demographics of people reached, and the financial status of people reached. To examine preliminary efficacy, we examined the change in participant knowledge before and after participating in the intervention. Feasibility: We reached N = 99 participants. Over 30% had a household income below $50,000, 34% had a high school degree or less, 2% were Hispanic, 68% were Black, and 54.5% reported that they or someone in their household had a bank account. Efficacy: Overall pre/post-test scores show significant increases in knowledge (p <.05). The Rise Up with Roswell intervention is a feasible and effective community-based educational intervention for financial literacy. These findings show that leveraging the Community Outreach and Engagement infrastructure of a NCI-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center was an effective strategy to reach high-risk community members and effectively deliver a financial literacy intervention.