SUNWISE--PROGRAMMING BY AQUATICS TEACHERS & PHARMACIST

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The goals of this 4-year project, called SUNWISE, will be to promote skin cancer prevention among children and to promote skin cancer prevention counseling among pharmacists. Two controlled trials evaluating the effectiveness of "SUNWISE" interventions will be conducted. In Study I, sun protection education for children ages 6-9 will be incorporated into aquatics classes curriculum and will be delivered by aquatics instructors. Aquatics classes provide an ideal setting for promoting sun protection behaviors-because relevant behaviors, such as sunscreen application, can be modeled and reinforced, and the aquatics instructor is a credible source of information to the child. Across four YMCAs, 44 aquatics classes consisting of 176 to 264 children will be randomly selected and assigned to the intervention or control group. The intervention will consist of modeling "sunwise" behaviors (e.g., sunscreen protective clothing) by the instructor, illustrating target behaviors using applicable animal/nature analogies, encouraging and rewarding children's performance of these behaviors, providing sunscreen and protective clothing, and distributing parallel materials to parents. The main dependent measure will be a parental recall interview assessing the child's sun exposure conducted prior to, immediately after, and 12 months after the intervention. The measure will be validated in a pilot study. In Study 2, a randomly selected sample of 54 pharmacies representing three chains will be randomly assigned to the intervention or control group. Pharmacists will be targeted because they are viewed as credible sources of health information, they come into contact with many individuals, and they are proximal to sunscreen. Pharmacists at the intervention sites will receive training and feedback on counseling/promoting sun protection behaviors among customers. They will be encouraged to ask customers about sun protection and to distribute educational pamphlets. The primary measure will consist of behavioral observations of pharmacists' compliance with the counseling protocol by a confederate. Both interventions will be well- tailored to their respective environments and, if successful, have the potential for institutionalization.