Seeking Cancer-Related Information From Media and Family/Friends Increases Fruit and Vegetable Consumption Among Cancer Patients

Abstract

Previous research suggests positive effects of health information seeking on prevention behaviors such as diet, exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption among the general population. The current study builds upon this research by examining the effect of cancer patients’ active information seeking from media and (non-medical) interpersonal sources on fruit and vegetable consumption. The results of this longitudinal study are based on data collected from a randomly drawn sample from the Pennsylvania Cancer Registry, comprising breast, prostate and colorectal cancer patients who completed mail surveys in the Fall of 2006 and 2007. There was a 65% response rate for baseline subjects (resulting N=2013); of those 1293 were interviewed one year later and 845 were available for final analyses. We used multiple imputation to replace missing data and propensity scoring to adjust for effects of possible confounders. There is a positive effect of information seeking at baseline on fruit and vegetable servings at follow-up; seekers consumed 0.43 (95% CI: 0.28 to 0.58) daily servings more than non-seekers adjusting for baseline consumption and other confounders. Active information seeking from media and interpersonal sources may lead to improved nutrition among the cancer patient population.

Are socioeconomic disparities in health behavior mediated by differential media use? Test of the communication inequality theory.

“…Overall, our study has shown that health media use is an important mediator both in the education and household income models. Given that the distribution of multiple risk behaviors is not equally distributed, but clustered around specific population groups [4][5][6][7][8], the focus of health promotion efforts should be directed at addressing multiple risk behaviors instead of targeting single risk behaviors one at a time. In this regard, our findings suggest that effective use of health media plays an important role in health promotion among those in low SES.…”

“…1 = "less than $5000", 2 = "$5000 to $7499", and so on; Range = [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19].…”

“…According to the theory, communication inequalities are defined as "differences among social classes in the generation, manipulation, and distribution of information at the group level and differences in access to and ability to take advantage of information at the individual level [3]." For example, previous studies have suggested that SES is related to media use, which is in turn related to health-related behaviors such as fruit and vegetable intake, consumption of the Mediterranean diet, physical activity, sun protection, and smoking [4][5][6][7][8][9][10][11].…”

Does the Number of Cancer Patients' Close Social Ties Affect Cancer-Related Information Seeking Through Communication Efficacy? Testing a Mediation Model

“…Information seeking has also been conceptualized as an active effort to obtain specific information outside of routine patterns of exposure to information from mediated and interpersonal sources (Niederdeppe, Hornik, Kelly et al, 2007; Shim, Kelly, & Hornik, 2006). Information seeking can be an effective behavior to aid in coping with the cancer experience (Case, Andrews, Johnson, & Allard, 2005; Loiselle, Lambert, & Cooke, 2006), help guide decision-making relating to treatment and survivor issues (Gray, Armstrong, DeMichele, Shwartz, & Hornik, 2009; McInnes, Cleary, Stein et al, 2008; Walsh, Trentham-Dietz, Schroepfer et al, 2010), as well as promote the adoption of healthy lifestyle behaviors (Bandura, 1986; Johnson, 1997; Lewis, Martinez, Freres et al, 2012; Ramirez, Freres, Martinez et al, in press).…”

“…Recently, health communication scholars have begun to examine how cancer patients achieve fulfillment of their informational needs (Mayer, Terrin, Kreps et al, 2007; Nagler et al, 2010) through actively searching for cancer-related information from family, friends, and mass media sources (Lewis et al, 2012), health care providers (Leadbeater, 2001; Talosig-Garcia & Davis, 2005), as well as actively engaging in information received from their treating physicians and other health professionals (Lewis, Gray, Freres, & Hornik, 2009; Martinez, Schwartz, Freres, Fraze, & Hornik, 2009; Tan, Bourgoin, Gray, Armstrong, & Hornik, 2011). This is an important population to study given the abundance of cancer-related information publicly available in the current media environment (see Ramirez et al, in press).…”