Messaging Strategies to Reduce Breast Cancer Over-screening in Older Women

Johns Hopkins University

Status: Completed

Conditions: Breast Cancer Screening

Treatments: Other: messages

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other; NIH

Identifiers

NCT05821023

IRB00283392

R01AG066741 (U.S. NIH Grant/Contract)

Details and patient eligibility

About

This is an online survey experiment with data collection over 2 time points two weeks apart. This is Aim 2 of a three-aim R01 project; overall project goal is to better understand how messages from different sources interact to affect older women's breast cancer screening decisions. In this current project, the investigators propose to test the effect of combined exposure to a clinician message + a message from another source (i.e. family/friend or media) on older women's breast cancer screening beliefs, attitudes, and intentions.

Full description

In a two-wave national online survey experiment, the investigators will randomly assign 3,000 women 65 years or older without personal history of breast cancer to 6 groups, including two control groups and four experimental groups. The experimental groups will read a message at Time 1 (T1) that may be from either family/friend or the media followed by a second message from a clinician one to two weeks later at Time 2 (T2).

The clinician message will be directed at reducing over-screening, mentioning the harms of over-screening and supporting screening cessation. The investigators will systematically vary the non-clinician message to be either consistent with the clinician message (also mentions harms of over-screening and supports screening cessation) or conflicting (mentions benefits of screening, supports continued screening and opposes screening cessation). The investigators include a no-exposure control group (Group 1) where the participants read no message at either time point and will only be asked the assessment questions. The investigators also include a single exposure group that reads only the clinician message (Group 2).

Enrollment: 4,173 patients

Sex: Female

Ages: 65+ years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Part of an online survey panel called KnowledgePanel
• able to complete survey in English

Exclusion criteria

• Personal history of breast cancer

Trial design

Primary purpose: Health Services Research

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

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4,173 participants in 6 patient groups

Group 1 - control (no exposure)

No Intervention group

Description:

No message at T1 or T2.

Group 2 - control (single exposure)

Other group

Description:

Single clinician message at T1 aimed at reducing over-screening. No message at T2.

Treatment:

Other: messages

Group 3

Experimental group

Description:

T1 - message from media source aimed at reducing over-screening. T2 - message from clinician aimed at reducing over-screening

Treatment:

Other: messages

Group 4

Experimental group

Description:

T1 - message from a close family member aimed at reducing over-screening. T2 - message from clinician aimed at reducing over-screening

Treatment:

Other: messages

Group 5

Experimental group

Description:

T1 - message from media source aimed at supporting continued screening. T2 - message from clinician aimed at reducing over-screening

Treatment:

Other: messages

Group 6

Experimental group

Description:

T1 - message from a close family member aimed at supporting continued screening. T2 - message from clinician aimed at reducing over-screening

Treatment:

Other: messages