Cancer literacy in Kenya – a situational analysis using the precede-proceed model to inform the development of context-specific cancer literacy interventions

The annual prevalence of cancer is increasing globally and in Kenya. This requires health systems to provide more and better health services, but newly diagnosed cancer patients also need a lot of information and competence to cope with the new situation. The knowledge, motivation and competences to find, understand, evaluate and apply health or cancer-related information is called health literacy or cancer literacy. In general, cancer literacy in Kenya is low. New educational interventions are needed that are free, relevant, engaging, reliable, and reach many cancer patients and their families wherever they are and at the time they need it. The rapid expansion of the Internet in Kenya makes it possible to use this avenue to create educational interventions for cancer patients. Storytelling approaches could be particularly relevant as they allow cancer patients to understand and translate factual information into lived experience, are informative, motivational and support skill development (through social learning) and are widely used in Kenya. To date, there is no reliable online website that uses the lived experience of cancer patients in Kenya. The overall aim of the CaLioS research project is to understand the cancer-related health literacy of cancer patients in sub-Saharan Africa and to improve it through a website of shared patient experiences in order to improve quality of life and treatment outcomes in the long term. As cancer health literacy and the effectiveness of educational programmes are always context and content dependent, it is impossible to implement a project from one country to another without a thorough situational analysis and adaptation. Green and Kreuter proposed the precede-proceed model to conduct a comprehensive situational analysis before developing an intervention. As there is a growing body of empirical evidence on cancer in Kenya, we decided to conduct a situational analysis of cancer literacy in Kenya by first conducting a systematic review of studies on cancer literacy in Kenya and thematically analysing the findings using constructs from the precede-proceed model.) The findings of this study, combined with a qualitative interview study, will inform the development of an online website for cancer patients.