Utilization of a telephone cancer information program by symptomatic people.

People with undiagnosed symptoms of cancer who called the Cancer Information Service (CIS), a toll-free telephone information program, were surveyed about their experiences with the program and the effects it had on their post-call behavior. The findings indicate that 75 percent of respondents who had not contacted a health professional before their call to the CIS did so after their call and 40 percent shared the information they obtained with other people. People who contacted a health professional after their call, compared to those who did not, were more likely to have called the CIS specifically for a physician referral or because they did not know whom else to contact, to have friends with cancer, to have had their most important question answered by the CIS, to have health insurance, and to report the influence of other people on their health actions. Interestingly, only half the respondents reported that they definitely would have contacted a health professional had the CIS not been available. The CIS, therefore, might be a link between symptomatic people and appropriate health services. Even so, about one-third of the sample did not know what illness they had or were still awaiting the outcome of medical tests up to several months after their call. Although the CIS was not the only source of health information utilized by respondents, the data demonstrate the important role that telephone information serves in the secondary prevention of cancer and in the delivery of effective health programs.