An Appearance-Based Intervention to Reduce Teen Skin Cancer Risk

An Appearance-Based Intervention to Reduce Teen Skin Cancer Risk

The purpose of this study is to determine whether a skin cancer prevention website is effective at reduce female teenagers' desire to use indoor tanning and ultimately their use of indoor tanning over an 18 month period.

The project is designed to improve the understanding of, and ability to affect UV risk behavior in teenage populations. The International Agency for Research in Cancer classifies indoor tanning as "carcinogenic to humans." There is evidence that female indoor tanning use increases dramatically from freshman to senior years of high school (e.g., 25-40% of older high school girls) making high school a critical time period for anti-tanning interventions to be carried out. This proposal assesses the effectiveness of a skin cancer prevention website for a nationally representative sample of high school teens in a randomized controlled trial. Teens exposed to the website will report reduced indoor tanning intentions, frequency and overall percentage of users while increasing sun protective behaviors at long-term (i.e 18 month) follow-up.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Teenager between 12 and 18 years old; has either indoor tanned in the past year or has indicated their intentions to indoor tan in the coming year.

Exclusion Criteria:

• None other than not meeting inclusion criteria.