Beaufort County Tell-A-Friend Campaign a Success

The American Cancer Society (ACS), Beaufort County Health Department, and NC-BCSP teamed up last fall to give a boost to mammography rates in Beaufort County. Fifteen women, including many NC-BCSP community outreach specialists (COSs) and lay health advisors, trained to become volunteer coordinators for the ACS Tell-A-Friend project, a breast cancer education and outreach telephone campaign. ACS launched Tell-A-Friend ten years ago. Today it operates in every state, and has been carried out in housing projects, churches, women's service sororities and synagogues. Dawn Bergmire-Sweat, the Regional Cancer Control Director at ACS in Raleigh, says, "It has been interesting and a learning experience to see how the face of Tell-A-Friend is different from place to place. It's been successfully adapted to many different types of communities and enabled ACS to reach more diverse groups of women."

Tell-A-Friend volunteers are asked to call women they know to talk about the benefits of breast self-exam, clinical breast exam, and mammography. Callers are asked to set a personal goal of convincing at least five women over 40 years of age to have a mammogram. After making their initial calls, volunteers follow up with each woman by telephone to make sure she scheduled an appointment for screening. Finally, each caller submits a log of completed calls to ACS to be used for evaluation and for mailing annual mammogram reminder letters to all Tell-A-Friend participants.

In September, 2001, about two weeks after being trained as a Tell-A-Friend coordinator, Beaufort County COS Mary Gurley organized NC-BCSP's first LHA-led Tell-A-Friend campaign. Ms. Gurley recruited and trained seven LHAs from Aurora, a small town in Beaufort county, to be callers. These seven LHAs phoned a total of 92 women! By the end of the campaign, 43 of those women said they had gotten a mammogram. And, of those, 27 said it was their first mammogram.

LHA Mary Michelle Hill, who is credited with calling 20 women, praised Tell-A-Friend as a natural way for LHAs to extend their outreach activities. "The phone is a good method," said Ms. Hill, "so are fliers. But, getting out among the people is the best." Yet despite the obvious advantages of face-to-face interaction, Ms. Hill acknowledged that it is not always feasible. In large, sparsely populated counties such as Beaufort, Tell-A-Friend can be a powerful outreach tool. "More LHAs should do phone campaigns," Ms. Hill added. "We need to stress how imperative it is to get the word out."