Testing and Comparing the Impacts of Mhealth-Based and Web-Based Education on Oral Cancer

Introduction: Oral cancer is a malignant neoplastic disease affecting the lip, oral cavity (mouth) and/or the oropharynx. Despite the intense and diverse public health interventions on oral cancer prevention, the global prevalence rates of oral cancer and its major risk factors are still very high. Hence, oral cancer is an issue of serious global health importance.

Aim: To test and compare the effectiveness, usability, uptake, and acceptability of an educational website and a mobile health application prototype on oral cancer in improving oral cancer knowledge among university students.

Methods: This study will adopt a randomised control trial design, and it will be conducted among 75 first-year bachelor's degree students from five universities across two continents: University of Rwanda (Rwanda, Africa), Usmanu Danfodiyo University (Nigeria, Africa), University of Peradeniya (Sri Lanka, Asia), University of Ibadan (Nigeria), and Saveetha University (India, Aisa). The study participants will be in three groups (Group 1, Group 2, and Group 3). The participants in Group 1 will be the control group (n = 25 participants; 5 participants from each university); that is the group that will not receive an educational intervention. However, those in Group 2 (n = 25 participants; 5 participants from each university) will receive a web-based educational intervention on oral cancer while those in Group 3 (n = 25 participants; 5 participants from each university) will receive an app-based educational intervention on oral cancer. Pretest survey and posttest survey will be done for all participants. The data collected will be statistically analysed using the Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 28 software. Descriptive statistics will be done for all variables while inferential statistics (analysis of variance) will be done to test for associations between variables of interest.

Conclusion: The findings of this study will determine the effectiveness, usability, uptake, and acceptability of the tested digital intervention tools.