“Health care practitioners may use absence of other preventive behaviors as potential markers for inadequate sunscreen use, prompting a point-of-care sun-safety intervention,” they suggested.
A school-based public health approach offers another route for education. “School sun-safety programs may alleviate the primary care burden,” wrote Dr. Correnti and her coinvestigators. The opportunity to deliver repeated, age-tailored messages as children progress through school may be effective in promoting healthy sun behaviors. Messaging that focuses on the negative effects of sun exposure on appearance such as age spots and wrinkles have been more effective than those warning of the risk of skin cancer for teens; investigating appearance-based content for this age group might be a good idea, the authors said.
The fact that the survey sites were in southern cities may mean that national rates of consistent sunscreen use for elementary schoolers may be even lower, said Dr. Correnti and her coauthors. Many other real-world factors, such as frequency and amount of sunscreen applied and the use of sun-protective clothing, couldn’t be captured by the survey, they acknowledged.
“Even in the most adherent group, non-Hispanic whites, only 44.8% always used sunscreen,” the researchers wrote. The study’s findings leave plenty of room for implementation of broad-based programs, especially in low-resource communities.
The National Institutes of Health funded the research. Dr. Correnti was supported by NIH awards.
SOURCE: Correnti CM et al. Pediatr Dermatol. 2018. doi: 10.1111/pde.13550.