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(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- Educational materials aimed at changing attitudes about indoor tanning may have a more positive effect on healthy skin practices than raising fear about skin cancer.
Each year, 1.3 million Americans are diagnosed with skin cancer resulting in more than 10,000 deaths. Indoor tanning has been linked to an increased risk of skin cancer in young women. In the past, efforts have been made to scare women into altering their sun exposure behaviors with limited success. Now, researchers at the East Tennessee State School of Public Health have found a different approach that may actually work -- education.
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Researchers designed a large, randomized, controlled study on an educational-based intervention aimed to reduce indoor tanning. The study included about 430 female college students, 200 of which received a booklet on the effects of indoor tanning. The booklet went into specifics about the history of tanning and the damaging effects that it directly causes to the skin. The booklet also offered information on healthier alternatives to enhancing appearance such as exercise, fashion choices and sunless tanning products.
Six months after these booklets were distributed the young women were surveyed about their recent indoor tanning practices and their intentions to tan indoors in the future. Researchers found indoor tanning was reduced by 35 percent in women who received booklets compared to the women who didnt receive any intervention. The group that received the booklets also had reduced positive attitudes toward indoor tanning and improved attitudes toward using healthier body image enhancements. Study authors were quoted as saying, A simple message delivery method, a booklet, was able to achieve clinically significant reductions in ultraviolet exposure behavior.
SOURCE: CANCER, published online Oct. 20, 2008
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