Sunscreen use increases with text reminders

Seventy individuals, aged 18 and older, were asked to apply sunscreen daily as part of a study under the direction of April W. Armstrong, M.D., of the University of California-Davis Health Systems in Sacramento, Calif. Through random assignment, half of the participants received text message reminders daily and the other half did not. The text messages consisted of two parts: one detailing local weather information and the other a simple reminder to use sunscreen.

Electronic adherence monitors were attached to the participants’ sunscreen tubes which sent electronic notification to a central station every time the cap was removed.

At the end of the six-week period, the participants who did not receive daily reminders averaged 12.6 days of sunscreen application, about 30% compliance. Those who received the text reminders averaged 23.6 days of application, about 56% compliance.

There are over one million cases of skin cancer diagnosed annually and one in five Americans will develop skin cancer during their lifetime, according to the Skin Cancer Foundation’s Web site.

“Despite continuing educational efforts, a wide gap persists between patients’ understanding of the harmful effects of excessive sun exposure and their regular application of sunscreens,” said the conductors of the study in the Archives of Dermatology article. “The short-term results of our study suggest that cellular telephone text message reminders are a low-cost, scalable and effective method of bridging this knowledge-action gap. Introduction of a program that incorporates text-message reminders to a large population may be an innovative preventive health measure against the development of skin cancer.”

Sixty-nine percent of the participants said they would continue to use the text reminders after the study and 89 percent said they would recommend the system to others.

Written by Sharalyn Hartwell
Exclusively for HULIQ