Proactive screening mammography counseling within the Cancer Information Service: results from a randomized trial.

In 1987, the Division of Cancer Prevention and Control, National Cancer Institute (NCI), funded a randomized trial of a proactive counseling protocol to promote screening mammography among age-eligible female callers to the Cancer Information Service (CIS). This protocol included interactive counseling by CIS counselors to help callers overcome barriers to screening mammography; this counseling was an extension of usual service and was combined with a 2-week follow-up mailout to reinforce the brief (6-minute) proactive telephone-counseling protocol. The screening-mammography counseling intervention was tested in two regional CIS offices using a randomized two-group design. Callers were randomly assigned to the intervention or control group based on the week of their call to the CIS (n = 1831 eligible female callers). Self-reported adherence to NCI screening-mammography guidelines was assessed from telephone interviews conducted at 12 months' follow-up (87% response rate). Among all CIS callers enrolled in this study, self-reported adherence to screening-mammography guidelines at 12 months' follow-up was 63.5%. The most frequently cited barriers to screening mammography reported by CIS callers were inconvenience/being too busy (52%), cost (36%), lack of physician referral (34%), no symptoms (34%), and fear of radiation (29%). A significant intervention effect on adherence behavior was found but only in one of the two test sites and only among CIS callers reporting total family income of $30,000 or more (odds ratio = 1.38, P = .04). The vast majority (90%) of CIS callers (both intervention and control subjects) endorsed the concept of proactive counseling by the CIS. The implications of these findings for the CIS and future research are discussed.

RCT Entities:   Population Interventions Outcomes