A method in prevention of cancer: peer education.

Today, cancer is the most common disease in many parts of the world. Choosing a healthy lifestyle and environment can help people prevent cancer development and an important aspect is better communication. Peer education models can provide networks within the context of 'social actions'and 'social ease'. Here we focus on a number of practical examples which have been described in the literature.

Assessing the efficacy of a peer education model in teaching breast self-examination to university students.

This study was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of a peer education model in teaching breast self-examination to a late adolescence female student group attending the second class of Buca Educational Faculty of Dokuz Eylül University (DEU). A total of 15 volunteer students were given the breast self-examination training programme by a researcher and thereby became qualified as peer educators. Each then reached 10 peers and conveyed information on the Breast-Self Examination Programme. The identification forms of the students were filled out by the researcher. Evaluation forms I and II developed by Maurer (1997) for regular BSE practice and skills were used and evaluated with 100 points. The "paired t-test", "Student's t-test", "McNemar test", and "Pearson correlation test" were employed to for statistical assessment. According to the evaluation results; while the students's average point of knowledge on BSE was 43.0 +/- 11.7 before training, it became 88.9 +/- 8.15 after a week, and 86.9 +/- 9.69 after four weeks. It was obvious that there was a meaningful difference between those knowledge rates (p<0,05). Similarly while the ratio of systematic practice of BSE among students was 2.6% before training it increased to 66% (p<0.05). Additionally, the average point of the students BSE practice skills became 91.5 +/- 7.25 at four weeks after the training with a significant increase as well (r=0,70). Therefore we conclude that the peer education model is an effective method for teaching breast self examination to students.