The BMA TP Gunton Award 1995: Development of a health education leaflet to promote early detection of oral cancer

Abstract

Objective To develop a health education leaflet for early detection and risk reduction of oral cancer.Design The early detection, risk reduction and prevention messages were organised into a draft leaflet based on the theories of Ley, Bandura, Becker and Romano and tested by focus groups and self-completion questionnaires. Focus groups and surveys were carried out in the following settings: a health clinic, two department stores, a salt processing plant, a pharmaceuticals plant, a bakery and an office. A total of six focus groups, two from each socioeconomic group, comprised: Bengali women (two focus groups), department store workers (two focus groups), salt production workers and secretaries (one focus group of each).Fifty-eight bakery and pharmaceuticals employees of all levels completed a questionnaire. The ratings given to the leaflet by the survey were based on the criteria adapted from Romano, which were as follows: worth remembering, informative, believable, made its point, interesting, well done, contained anything new, was convincing, personally relevant, pleasant, frightening confusing, and engendered the intent to act differently in future.Results Both the focus groups and the survey revealed that the information in the leaflet was well received. Ninety-seven per cent (56) of those surveyed thought it was worth remembering, and 71% (41) of respondents said it was new to them. Mouth self-examination messages stood out most to 67% (39) of respondents. Forty-one per cent (24) of respondents expressed the intention of changing their behaviour.Conclusions Respondents' comments were used to inform the redrafting of the leaflet, which we hope to evaluate for behavioural outcomes in future. From the above results we conclude that the leaflet was successful in transmitting the main message, which stressed the need to perform mouth self-examination, and was successful in stimulating people to think about changing their behaviour. The leaflet is now in production, and we hope to evaluate its effectiveness in the near future.