PEARL: A Guide for Developing Community-Engaging and Culturally-Sensitive Education Materials

Community outreach and engagement has been a regular activity of the National Cancer Institute at its designated Cancer Centers. However, in 2016, community outreach and engagement became a required activity for all cancer centers. Yet there is a gap in the literature that provides guidelines for developing materials that resonate with communities. We developed the PEARL rubric to fulfill that gap from our work developing culturally sensitive breast cancer education materials for African American and Immigrant African women. We conducted a targeted literature review to understand the approaches that have been used for developing education materials for communities. We reviewed the literature and distilled key elements into our PEARL guide for creating culturally appropriate education materials. PEARL consists of five elements: Plain language and understandability, Explicit data, statistics, and graphs, Affirmative framing, Representative content, and Local connection. PEARL is a modern comprehensive guide that researchers can use for creating culturally sensitive materials. It is designed to guide researchers develop educational materials who have little to no experience in community engagement.