S331 Colorectal Cancer Screening Uptake Among Deaf Adults in the United States

Abstract

Introduction: Persons with disabilities face challenges in access and utilization of healthcare resources in part due to the additional resources needed for their health delivery. In the United States, approximately 10,000,000 persons are hard of hearing and 1,000,000 are functionally deaf. There is little information about colorectal cancer screening uptake among deaf and severely hearing-impaired US adults. To evaluate the uptake of CRC screening among deaf US adults. Methods: We used the 2018 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS 5 Cycle 2). Our analytic cohort included 2,049 respondents (weighted population size = 107,282,358) without a personal history of CRC who were at least 50 years old, reported whether they were deaf or not and answered questions regarding their ever use of CRC screening modalities (Fecal Immunochemical Test, sigmoidoscopy or colonoscopy). We used logistic regression analyses to examine the association of deafness with ever being screened for CRC. We used survey weights in all analyses. We calculated odds ratios (OR) and 95% confidence interval (CI). Results: There were 202 deaf respondents (weighted population size = 9,994,286) and 1,847 persons with normal hearing (weighted population size = 97,288,072). Deaf respondents were older (mean age 70.6 years versus 62.1 years), were more likely to be male (59.9% versus 46.2%, P = 0.004), and had less formal education (High school or less 50.5% versus 35%, P = 0.004). There were no differences by race, health insurance, smoking or BMI. There was no difference in CRC screening uptake among deaf and normal hearing adults in the US (Table). Conclusion: Hearing status was not associated with CRC screening. There is a continuous need to ensure adequate access to all members of the population in the receipt of CRC screening to ensure that “no colon is left behind”.Table 1.: Multivariate model adjusted for age, sex, race, insurance, marital status, BMI and smoking.