Health

No Clear Winner Among Ways To Encourage Mammograms
By Becky Ham, Science Writer, Health Behavior News Service

Repeat mammograms may be one of the best ways to reduce breast cancer deaths among American women, but researchers have yet to find a strategy that works best when it comes to getting women back to the clinic.

The research suggests that simple mammogram reminder letters are just as effective as more complex programs that include letters, tip sheets and phone calls, according to William Rakowski, Ph.D., of Brown University and colleagues.

Rakowski and colleagues’ study is also one of the first to test whether women would be more likely to get repeat mammograms if they could choose the type of reminder they received. Their findings appear in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

Most women in the study who were able to choose their reminder format requested the simple letter. However, they were no more likely to get a repeat mammogram than women who didn’t get a choice of reminders, the researchers found.

Regardless of which type of reminder they received, 70 percent to 75 percent of the women did get a repeat mammogram. Rakowski and colleagues caution, however, that the apparent success of the reminders may not carry over to other health behaviors.

"Although achieving any sustained health practice is a challenge, the context of repeat screening in this project was probably not as challenging from a behavioral point of view as for interventions to influence a daily health habit," Rakowski says.

The researchers also found that women who lived in households with four or more people and those who had waited more than a year between their last mammograms were less likely to get a repeat screening.

The study compared strategies for encouraging repeat mammograms among 1,614 women in Rhode Island and North Carolina. Women were randomly assigned to receive either a single reminder letter or one of two more intensive reminder programs. A fourth group was able to choose which kind of reminder they would receive.

The study was supported by the National Cancer Institute.

Health Behavior News Service