A Ran­domised Con­trolled Tri­al of the effect of pro­vid­ing online risk infor­ma­tion and lifestyle advice for the most com­mon pre­ventable cancers

Gol­nes­sa Mas­son, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cambridge

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We will present our study which assessed the short-term effects of pro­vid­ing per­son­alised can­cer risk infor­ma­tion in an online for­mat on can­cer risk beliefs and self-report­ed behav­iour. We ran­domised 1018 par­tic­i­pants, recruit­ed through the online plat­form Pro­lif­ic, to either a con­trol group receiv­ing can­cer-spe­cif­ic lifestyle advice or one of three inter­ven­tion groups receiv­ing their com­put­ed 10-year risk of devel­op­ing one of the five most com­mon pre­ventable can­cers either as a bar chart, a pic­to­graph or a qual­i­ta­tive scale along­side the same lifestyle advice.

The soft­ware pack­age Goril­la was used for ran­domi­sa­tion and deliv­ery of risk infor­ma­tion as well as the pre and post-inter­ven­tion ques­tion­naires. The pri­ma­ry out­come was change from base­line in com­put­ed risk rel­a­tive to an indi­vid­ual with a rec­om­mend­ed lifestyle (RRI) at three months. Sec­ondary out­comes includ­ed: health-relat­ed behav­iours, risk per­cep­tion, anx­i­ety, wor­ry, inten­tion to change behav­iour, and a new­ly defined con­cept, risk con­vic­tion. We will briefly present the tri­al find­ings as well as dis­cussing the ben­e­fits and chal­lenges of our cho­sen online methods.