Telephone, mail reminders serve as effective mammography motivators.(Brief Article)

2002 SEP 26 - (NewsRx.com & NewsRx.net) -- Women who receive personalized messages by telephone and by mail may be more likely to get mammography screening, a new study shows.

"Tailored interventions - those developed for one specific recipient based on her particular characteristics - have shown great promise for increasing mammography," said researcher Victoria L. Champion, DNS, of the Indiana University School of Nursing.

Champion's study followed 976 women in St. Louis, Missouri and Indianapolis, Indiana, who were 51 and older and who had not had a mammogram for at least the previous 15 months. They found that women who received telephone and mailed messages about the importance of breast cancer screening were more likely to get a mammogram than the women who did not receive such messages.

The women were divided into four groups: those who received no messages, those who received them by telephone only, those who received them by mail only and those who received them by a combination of mail and telephone.

"The combination intervention group had more than twice as many women who received mammograms by follow-up than did the usual care group," Champion noted. Mail and telephone messages separately also increased mammography screenings, at about the same rate in each group, but individually did not produce the level of follow-up seen in the combination group.

The messages responded to the women's answers to interview questions. For instance, women who expressed disbelief that mammograms can detect breast lumps while they are too small to be felt received a message that said something like: "Did you know that mammograms can find breast cancer about 2 years before it can even be felt by your doctor? Mammograms are the only way to find cancer this small. So, instead of waiting for the ...