Cancer Education Interventions in Adolescents: A Systematic Review of Scope and Content

Abstract

Given the long induction time of many cancers and the fact that modifiable risk factors (e.g., cigarette smoking) including preventive factors (e.g., human papillomavirus [HPV] vaccination, healthy dietary and physical activity patterns) are influenced in adolescence, educating adolescents about cancer causation and risk reduction may have a large impact on reducing the cancer burden. We conducted a systematic review of literature evaluating the impact of cancer education interventions on adolescent knowledge of cancer risk reduction. We searched for articles published from 2000 to 2019 and identified 33 studies meeting our criteria. Given the methodological heterogeneity across studies, we briefly assessed effectiveness but focused on examining the design of the intervention and study. The majority of studies took place outside of the United States (67%). Most studies solely addressed skin or cervical cancer (67%) with only 18% ( n = 6) discussing multiple cancers. The majority of interventions were a single-session (55%), did not involve a control or comparison group (67%), and were evaluated using a pre-test and a single post-test (61%); some studies administered multiple post-tests. Few studies (12%) investigated adolescents’ knowledge of lifestyle and environmental risk factors at both the individual and community level. Most studies (94%) reported improvement in knowledge following an intervention. Our review revealed wide methodological variation and a deficit in research evaluating interventions that address multiple cancer types and risk factors. Future research should robustly test whether comprehensive cancer education for adolescents can reduce the cancer burden, particularly in communities with major cancer health disparities.