Abstract
BackgroundInitiatives to promote early diagnosis include raising public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and addressing barriers to seeking medical help about cancer. Awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and emotional barriers, such as, fear, worry, and embarrassment strongly influence help seeking behaviour. Whether anxiety influences seeking medical help about cancer is not known. The purpose of this study about adolescents was to examine: 1) the relationship between contextual factors and awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and barriers (including emotional barriers) to seeking medical help, and 2) associations between anxiety and endorsed barriers to seeking medical help. Interpretation of data is informed by the common sense model of the self-regulation of health and illness.MethodsA cross-sectional study of 2,173 Scottish adolescents (age 12/13 years) using the Cancer Awareness Measure. Socio-demographic questions were also included. Descriptive statistics were calculated and two Poisson regression models were built to determine independent predictors of: 1) the number of cancer warning signs recognized, and; 2) number of barriers to help seeking endorsed.ResultsAnalysis identified that knowing someone with cancer was a significant independent predictor of recognising more cancer warning signs whereas Black and Minority Ethnic status was a significant independent predictor of recognising fewer cancer warning signs. Emotional barriers were the most commonly endorsed, followed by family, service and practical barriers. Over two thirds of adolescents were ‘worried about what the doctor would find’ and over half were ‘scared’. Higher anxiety scores, knowing more cancer warning signs and female gender were significant independent predictors of barriers to help seeking.ConclusionImproving cancer awareness and help seeking behaviour during adolescence may contribute to early presentation. Contextual factors (for example, ethnicity, gender, knowing someone with cancer), and emotional dimensions (for example, anxiety, fear, worry) are critical components in help seeking behaviours. The role of emotional factors indicates that public health campaigns focused on awareness and help seeking may benefit from having a more emotional focus, for example, including references to feelings, such as, fears and worries.
Highlights
Initiatives to promote early diagnosis include raising public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and addressing barriers to seeking medical help about cancer
In the United Kingdom (UK) there are around 2,200 teenagers and young people (15–24 year olds) diagnosed each year and more than 80% survive the disease for at least 5 years, there is considerable variation in survival between diagnostic groups [2]
Study design Data were drawn from the Adolescent Cancer Education (ACE) study, the design of which is described in the published protocol [38]
Summary
Initiatives to promote early diagnosis include raising public awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and addressing barriers to seeking medical help about cancer. Evidence suggests that awareness is lower among males and adults in ‘lower’ occupational groups and ethnic minority groups [14] These groups in particular, may be at risk of presenting later with symptoms. Kyle and colleagues found that girls compared to boys and ethnic minority compared to White adolescents recognised fewer warning signs for cancer but these differences were not statistically significant [15] They found that ‘knowing someone with cancer’ was associated with recognition of more warning signs for cancer and endorsement of more barriers to seeking medical help [15]. Studies involving larger sample sizes may contribute towards addressing this uncertainty
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