Abstract
Public health campaigns have improved knowledge on UVR-associated skin cancer risk and increased sun protection awareness. However, tanned skin is still a common beauty ideal. The relationship between knowledge, attitudes and protective behavior is not fully understood yet. A population-based survey was thus performed in the district of Erlangen involving 2,619 parents of 3- to 6-year old children. By means of a self-administered standardized questionnaire parental knowledge about risk factors for skin cancer, their attitudes towards tanning and details of protective measures taken for their children were assessed. The study analyzed specifically the impact of parental tanning attitudes on sun-protective measures for their children while controlling for parental knowledge about skin cancer risk factors. While parental knowledge was significantly (inversely) associated with agreement to the statement “Tanned skin is healthy skin”, this was not the case for “Tanning makes me look better”. Overall, tanning affirmative attitudes were inversely associated with protective measures taken for the children, whereas parental knowledge had a positive impact on sun protection at the beach only. Multivariable analyses provided evidence for an effect of parental attitude on protective behavior independent of parental knowledge. Tanning attitudes and tanned skin as the misguided ideal of beauty need to be addressed in future public health campaigns to enhance the effectiveness of preventive activities in changing sun protective behavior.
Highlights
Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) plays a decisive role in the pathogenesis of various forms of skin cancer and has been established as their main environmental risk factor [1]
According to German cancer registry data, the crude incidence of malignant melanoma amounted to roughly 20 new cases among 100,000 inhabitants in 2006, which means a tripling since the 1980s [8]
We addressed the complex relationship between parental knowledge, attitude towards tanning and protective behavior for young children in a large population-based survey
Summary
Ultraviolet radiation (UVR) plays a decisive role in the pathogenesis of various forms of skin cancer and has been established as their main environmental risk factor [1]. Skin cancer is one of the most common cancer types in fair skinned populations around the world [3]. For several decades the incidences of cutaneous malignant melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancer have been rising rapidly in many countries with fair skinned populations, including Germany and other parts of Europe [4,5,6,7]. Rising levels of individual UVR exposure have been identified as the main driving force of this trend [9,10,11]
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