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Public Health Research and Practice Public Health Research and Practice Society
The peer-reviewed journal of the Sax Institute
RESEARCH ARTICLE (Open Access)

Improving communication about cancer screening: moving towards informed decision making

Jolyn Hersch A * , Brooke Nickel A , Alex Ghanouni B , Jesse Jansen A and Kirsten McCaffery A
+ Author Affiliations
- Author Affiliations

A Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia

B Research Department of Behavioural Science and Health, University College London, UK

* Correspondence to: jolyn.hersch@sydney.edu.au

Public Health Research and Practice 27, e2731728 https://doi.org/10.17061/phrp2731728
Published: 26 July 2017

2017 © Hersch et al. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International Licence, which allows others to redistribute, adapt and share this work non-commercially provided they attribute the work and any adapted version of it is distributed under the same Creative Commons licence terms.

Abstract

For decades, public communications about cancer screening have used persuasive techniques with the aim of maximising the number of people being screened. However, perspectives have changed more recently to acknowledge that screening can lead to harm as well as benefit, and that it is important for service users to consider both. For some types of cancer screening, there is professional contention about whether benefits clearly outweigh harms. In light of this, an emerging trend in cancer screening communication is to try to support informed decision making – that is, to help people understand both the advantages and disadvantages of screening, allowing them to make individual decisions about their screening participation that reflect their informed preferences. In this review, we provide an overview of key theoretical and practical aspects of improving communication and supporting informed decision making about cancer screening, highlight relevant research and discuss future implications.