Urban-rural kidney cancer disparities: The role of health literacy, cancer literacy, smoking status, and urinary bother.

Abstract

e16513 Background: Kidney cancer (KCa) does not currently have efficacious screening methods, therefore targeting modifiable risk factors is a strong approach to primary prevention. Prior research from our group identified a significant difference in KCa incidence and mortality between the urban and rural populations in Illinois, but the reason(s) for this geographic variation were unclear. The objective of this pilot study was to investigate KCa-relevant knowledge and health behaviors in order to explain our observed urban-rural differences in KCa incidence and mortality, and to inform approaches to KCa prevention. Methods: A convenience sample was surveyed from five study sites between June 2016 and February 2018. These included 207 urban and 53 rural patients presenting at urology and primary care clinics. Four outcome measures related to KCa were assessed using validated measures: 1) health literacy, 2) cancer health literacy, 3) smoking status and knowledge of its association with KCa, and 4) degree of bother caused by urologic symptoms. Multivariate logistic regression models were used to examine these outcome measures between the two populations. Smoking history, personal and family history of cancer, and socio-demographic characteristics were controlled for in the analysis. Results: The overall model for predicting health literacy was significant (Wald Pvalue = 0.0269). When accounting for all covariates, rural versus urban residence was not a significant predictor of adequate health literacy (p = 0.4871). However, participants with higher levels of education (p = 0.0005), higher household income (p = 0.0395), and participants who were female (p = 0.0104) were all more likely to have adequate vs. low health literacy. We did not identify a statistically significant difference in cancer health literacy, knowledge of smoking as a KCa risk factor, or measurement of urinary bother between urban and rural residents in this population. Conclusions: The analyses revealed significant differences in health literacy by education, income, and gender, but not by geographic location. While there were no statistically significant geographical differences found in three of our four domains, this may have been attributed to the low proportion of rural-residing clinic patients recruited in this study. With potential limitations of using RUCA as a measure of rurality, future work is needed to better reach this population and validate results to understand the disparity of improving KCa outcomes in rural areas.