Veteran Peer Navigators to Promote Shared Decision Making for PSA Screening

Prostate cancer is the most common non-cutaneous malignancy among men in the United States, accounting for one third of new cancer diagnoses in VA. Prostate Cancer is commonly detected using prostate-specific antigen (PSA), a non-specific test whose use in prostate cancer screening has led to modest population-level survival benefits at the cost of over-detection of low-risk disease. Recognizing this trade off, United States Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF) and VHA Clinical Preventive Services recommend a Shared Decision Making (SDM) approach to PSA screening. Regardless of whether they ultimately elect PSA screening or not, patients should discuss the best evidence for and against it with clinicians and be supported to make high quality decisions. In spite of broad support for these recommendations, SDM is challenging to implement because primary care providers see it as too time consuming and have insufficient training and support to perform it. Moreover, primary care office visits are notoriously too brief to address the multitude of recommended, beneficial preventive interventions. There is an urgent need to incorporate SDM paradigms into routine VA clinical practice. An ideal intervention accomplishing this would improve decision quality at low cost and be acceptable to Veterans and clinicians. The primary challenge to implementing routine PSA SDM counseling is clinic workflow. One solution may be to enlist non-clinician healthcare team members to offer SDM counseling. Decision coaches can provide non-directive support to help patients weigh options, prepare for provider discussions, and implement decisions. Decision coaches improve knowledge and promote SDM. In a pilot program, the investigators group trained lay health workers as decision coaches to counsel Black men considering PSA screening in a non-VA community care setting. There is an urgent need to expand this approach to all men considering PSA screening and adapt it to the VA setting. The investigators propose training Veteran peers, who are well-known to promote healthful behaviors among Veterans, to be decision coaches to promote SDM among Veterans considering PSA screening. This peer-led approach may provide excellent counseling at acceptable cost and decreased clinician burden. The objective of this study is to test the efficacy of a Veteran-peer-navigator-led decision-coaching program (PDC) to facilitate SDM for PSA screening at VA NY Harbor. The investigators will randomize Veterans seeking primary care to receive 1) a standard of care screening decision aid (DA) along with PDC on PSA screening (intervention), or 2) the same DA without counseling (control). The outcomes of interest are decision quality, PSA utilization, acceptability and cost of the PDC program with the goal of future system-wide dissemination. Additionally, since VA is dedicated to promoting health equity through telehealth, the investigators will explore the effects of patient race (Black versus non-Black) and communication format (in-person versus telehealth).