International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health | February 2020 | Vol 7 | Issue 2 Page 711 International Journal of Community Medicine and Public Health Kotwal A et al. Int J Community Med Public Health. 2020 Feb;7(2):711-716 http://www.ijcmph.com pISSN 2394-6032 | eISSN 2394-6040 Original Research Article Outcome of community based planned intervention targeting perceptions, attitudes and health seeking behaviour regarding cancers in New Delhi, India Atul Kotwal 1 *, Tulika Seth 2 , Rakesh Thakur 3 , G. K. Rath 4 , D. N. Sharma 5 , Jitendra Nagpal 6 INTRODUCTION Cancer prevention and control, a complex issue needs to be based on effective implementation of preventive, promotive, treatment and rehabilitative approaches. Additionally, palliative care is required for improving quality of life of patients in incurable terminal stages. In the context of limited resources in LMIC countries like India, appropriate planning, strategies and their effective implementation can lead to remarkable results in ABSTRACT Background: Cancer prevention and control needs to be based on effective implementation of all approaches. Community as well as individual level interventions to increase knowledge and early reporting have shown effectiveness. A community-based intervention trial was conducted to design, implement and test short-term outcomes of evidence based preventive strategies. Methods: A mixed methods, three phased study was conducted in three districts of Delhi, which were selected by a random process. Two randomly selected districts out of these three were intervention districts while third was the control. A total sample of 500 in each district was studied in quantitative pre and post -intervention phases. Multistage, stratified, cluster sampling was utilized. Pre-tested and validated tools were used. Results: Post intervention, statistically significant higher scores were observed in all domains in intervention districts as compared to control (p<0.01). Though comparison of slum versus non-slum showed significant increment in knowledge and practice scores, with higher scores for non-slum respondents, the attitudes were very similar (p>0.05). The increment score changes between males and females was similar in all classes of society versus control district. Comparison within the intervention and control groups revealed increased scores in intervention districts and decreased scores in control district, in all domains (p<0.05). Conclusions: Our study has helped in understanding the determinants of perceptions, attitude and practices regarding cancer in the community, This, helped in formulating the need-based intervention strategies. Testing the short-term outcome of intervention showed it to be effective. Keywords: Attitude, Cancers, Cancer control programme, Community based intervention, Knowledge, Practices 1 Department of Community Medicine and Epidemiology, Armed Forces Medical Services, India 2 Department of Hematology-Oncology, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India 3 Department of Community Oncology, 4 Chief, Bhim Rao Ambedkar Institute Rotary Cancer Hospital, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi, India 5 Department of Radiation Oncology, All India Institute Of Medical Science, New Delhi, India 6 Consultant, Psychiatry, Mool Chand Hospital, New Delhi, India Received: 06 December 2019 Revised: 14 January 2020 Accepted: 16 January 2020 *Correspondence: Dr. Atul Kotwal, E-mail: dratulkotwal@gmail.com Copyright: © the author(s), publisher and licensee Medip Academy. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.18203/2394-6040.ijcmph20200454