Sun Protection and Public Information.

Abstract

There is enough evidence that skin cancer can be prevented by an adequate usage of primary prevention measures. However, when examining people's real-life sun protection behaviour, it was often found to be insufficient. On the one hand, some people seem unaware about their risk to develop skin cancer as they might not sufficiently inform themselves. On the other hand, a lot of people know about the risk to develop skin cancer; however, they do not adequately protect themselves. Reasons for that are individual barriers such as the usage is too time-consuming or structural barriers such as unfavourable working conditions. In addition, a lot of people use sunscreen incorrectly as they tend to use only 20%-50% of the amount needed or do not reapply it.Studies have shown that there are several prevention campaigns demonstrating the successful increase in public awareness, but still more educational effort is needed to promote a better sun protection behaviour. On the basis of the effectiveness of previous intervention campaigns, future ones should use personal interventions or multi-component media such as the Internet. For promoting health-related information via the Internet, it is important to offer comprehensive, reliable, evidence-based information and to ban misleading or false information regarding sun protection.