Preventing Skin Cancer: Education and Policy Approaches in Outdoor Recreation Settings

Task Force Finding*

Many Americans spend significant amounts of time pursuing outdoor recreation or traveling to regions with high UV levels within the United States and abroad. Increases in recreational sun exposure appear to be associated with increased risk of melanoma. Therefore, recreational and tourism sites constitute potential points of intervention for sun-protection programs targeting adults as well as children and their parents.

The Task Force found sufficient evidence of effectiveness of interventions in recreational or tourism settings to change adult behaviors, based on improvements in the adult sun-protective behavior of covering up, and recommends these interventions. Available reports provide insufficient evidence to determine the effectiveness of the intervention in reducing sunburn in adults and children, because results were inconsistent (adult sunburn) or too few studies reported on this outcome (children’s sunburn). Although available reports also demonstrate evidence of effectiveness of educational and policy interventions in recreational settings in improving children’s sun-protective behaviors—including sunscreen use and composite sun-protective behaviors—these are not recommendation outcomes.

*From the following publication:

Task Force on Community Preventive Services. Recommendations to prevent skin cancer by reducing exposure to ultraviolet radiation. [PDF - 70KB] Am J Prev Med 2004;27(5):467-70.

Review completed: July 2002