By Elizabeth Cloutman

JOAN MOSHER/SPECIAL TO THE TOWN CRIER

Los Altan Armando Valdez uses communication research, technology to reach underserved minorities

In early October, Valdez and Associates of Mountain View was one of 68 firms to receive a 2001 Tibbetts Award, given by the U.S. Small Business Administration as its highest recognition for innovative technology.

Owner Armando Valdez, a Los Altos resident, began his business 10 years ago as a social marketing research firm devoted to designing and implementing community education campaigns and health promotion interventions targeted at low-income, minority and other hard-to-reach populations. He established Valdez and Associates after a decade as a communications professor and as the director of a communications research institute at Stanford University that focused on the impact of emerging technology on society and issues of access and equity.

“With my student activism in the ’60s and my training in communications, it was a natural synergism there to do more than just teaching and research,” Valdez said.

Valdez operates his firm much like a research institute, he said. For each project, he brings in a different team of experts: computer specialists, researchers, video and filmmakers, photographers and graphic artists. In the past decade, his firm has produced videos, public service announcements and other educational technology on subjects such as violence prevention, elder abuse and foster care.

About 18 months ago, Valdez, working with a team of experts and researchers, completed a project he calls “cutting edge.” With a grant from the National Cancer Institute (through the Small Business Administration’s Small Business Innovation Research program), Valdez completed the design and field-testing of a bilingual, multimedia touchscreen kiosk for educating low-literacy Latinas about breast cancer and the importance of mammograms. “

The idea was to test the efficacy of this technology. It hadn’t been done before,” Valdez said. “The assumption was the technology wouldn’t work. We thought it would, but (that success) had more to do with the content, not the technology itself.”

Researchers spent two years talking to women about what they did and didn’t know about breast cancer and mammograms and about what their fears were. “We put that in the content of the kiosk,” Valdez said.

The kiosks use graphics, text, music and full-motion video to present a message about breast cancer screening and the importance of early detection. There are 10 interactive modules (designed to be culturally, linguistically and age-appropriate) that answer questions about the probability of getting breast cancer, screening methods, alternatives to health insurance and appropriate questions to ask a physician. The kiosks are designed in such a way they can be monitored and modified remotely, and print out thermal copies of the information that women can take with them.

During field testing, researchers set up the kiosks in lobbies or special waiting rooms in six California clinics, including Kaiser Santa Theresa, Gardner Health Center in San Jose, a Fresno Kaiser Clinic and three community health centers in the Greater Los Angeles area. 1,200 women chosen at random on site agreed to be contacted after using the kiosks.

The assumptions Valdez and his team made about the kiosk proved correct. The follow-up study showed that 51 percent of the women contacted who had never had a mammogram or were overdue, scheduled or obtained one within four months after being exposed to the kiosk intervention. Forty-two percent of those who had received a mammogram said the kiosk had influenced their decision.

“We have seen seven documented cases of women with lumps who were afraid, and after (using the kiosk), they got themselves diagnoses. They are all doing well,” Valdez said.

Results of the kiosk project have been published in several academic journals, and a professional colleague of Valdez in Seattle is planning a similar project. Valdez’s team is now working on a commercial version of the kiosk prototypes.

“The Tibbetts Award is a validation of our research,” Valdez added. “We’ve met our harshest critics (in academia and research) and now we’re getting nudges from the business side.”

Valdez said his firm is also in the process of developing a CD-ROM on nutrition for elementary-school students, as well as working on educational content on cardiovascular disease prostate cancer and diabetes. “I’ve got another 20 years of work left,” the Del Rio, Texas native said, laughing.