Poster Presentation Clinical Oncology Society of Australia Annual Scientific Meeting 2024

Investigating consumer perspectives on Short Message Service reminders aimed at increasing participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (#460)

Nicole Perry 1 , Mark Jenkins 2 , Carlene Wilson 2 , Jennifer McIntosh 2 3 , Nancy Baxter 4 5 , Driss Ait Ouakrim 2 , Belinda Goodwin 1 2 6
  1. Cancer Council Queensland, Fortitude Valley, QLD, Australia
  2. Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  3. Department of General Practice and Primary Care, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, VIC, Australia
  4. Department of Surgery, University of Toronto Faculty of Medicine, Toronto, ON, Canada
  5. Faculty of Medicine and Health, University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, Australia
  6. Centre for Health Research, University of Southern Queensland, Springfeild, QLD, Australia

Aims

Despite playing a key role in the early detection of bowel cancer and improving outcomes for those diagnosed, participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program has been consistently suboptimal, never exceeding 44%. Effective, evidence-based interventions are urgently needed to encourage more Australians to participate in bowel cancer screening. This study aimed to assess consumer perspectives on the usefulness, feasibility, and readability of various short message service (SMS) reminders aimed at increasing participation in bowel cancer screening.

Methods

Australians aged 50-74 (N = 1016) were invited to take part in an online survey. Participants were shown five SMS reminders displayed in a random order and asked to provide ratings after each SMS, followed by questions regarding their health communication preferences and sociodemographic information. Bayesian multilevel modelling was employed to examine the effects of SMS content type on clarity, usefulness, likelihood of encouraging kit return and likelihood of being irritated by each SMS reminder.

Results

SMS reminders that encouraged consumers to place their kit somewhere visible (b = 0.45, CrI[0.33, 0.56]), included a GP endorsement message (b = 0.32, CrI[0.21, 0.43]), or included brief instructions on how to complete the kit (b = 0.22, CrI[0.11, 0.33]) were rated as more likely to encourage kit return than a plain reminder SMS. The visible, GP and instruct SMS reminders were also rated more useful than the plain SMS reminder (visible: b = 0.38, CrI[0.27, 0.49]; GP: b = 0.16, CrI[0.04, 0.27]; instruct: b = 0.27, CrI[0.16, 0.39].

Conclusions

Findings from the present study suggest that SMS reminders may be optimised for efficacy by modifying the contents included in the reminder. GP endorsement, provision of brief instructions or suggesting placing the kit somewhere visible are some potentially effective inclusions in such a reminder.