Testing a Behavioural Approach to Improving Cancer Screening Rates

Summary

Family doctors can play a critical role in successfully arranging cancer screening tests to occur, especially if they know which patients are due for these tests. However, they don't always interact with or take advantage of registry data to this end. For example, in Ontario, the Screening Activity Report provides exactly this information to family doctors, helping them identify their patients who are overdue for screening. Unfortunately, less than half of family doctors regularly use the Screening Activity Report even though they get monthly email reminders. One possible reason is that the reminders they receive are not designed to compel action. They are easy for family doctors to miss or dismiss. This study will compare multiple different ways of designing the reminders. The different versions of the email are tested in a 2\^3 factorial trial testing three behaviour change techniques to see which ones will lead to more family physicians interacting with the Screening Activity Report and at increasing the number of patients that get all the appropriate screening tests for cervical, breast, and/or colon cancer.

Conditions

• Early Detection of Cancer
• Clinical Trial

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Anticipated regret

Induce awareness of future regret about the unwanted behaviour

BEHAVIORAL

Material incentive

Inform that valued objects will be delivered if and only if that has been progress in performing the desired behaviours

BEHAVIORAL

Problem solving

Analyze or prompt the person to factors that influence the behaviour and select strategies that help overcome barriers

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Ontario Institute for Cancer Research

  collaborator OTHER

• Cancer Care Ontario

  collaborator OTHER

• Ottawa Hospital Research Institute

  collaborator OTHER

• Laval University

  collaborator OTHER

• Women's College Hospital

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Noah Ivers, MD, PhD · Women's College Hospital

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

FACTORIAL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2017-05-10

Primary Completion

2017-09-30

Completion

2017-09-30

Countries

• Canada

Study Locations