Internet use can reduce fatalistic view of cancer

Those in lower socioeconomic status benefit the most from access to internet

2012-12-10

(Press-News.org) Washington, DC (December 10, 2012) – Many Americans have fatalistic views on cancer prevention—they believe that getting cancer is a matter of luck or fate. Recent research, published in the Journal of Communication, found that people who use the internet to inquire about their health are more likely to have a positive outlook on cancer prevention and diagnosis.

Chul-joo Lee, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Jeff Niederdeppe, Cornell University, and Derek Freres, University of Pennsylvania, published in the Journal of Communication their findings from a nationally representative survey of adults between the ages of 40 and 70. Conducted longitudinally over the course of a year, the survey collected 2,489 cases and were weighted for age, gender, ethnicity, education and census region. Previous studies have shown that local TV viewing can increase cancer fatalism overtime. This study is the first to examine internet use, and the results were promising.

The findings suggested that people who use the Internet frequently to acquire health or medical information are less likely than those who do not use the Internet for such purposes to hold cancer fatalism over time. More importantly, the research showed that Internet use reduced cancer fatalism among less educated and less health-knowledgeable people to a greater extent than among more educated and more knowledgeable people.

"Reducing cancer fatalism, especially among people with low socioeconomic status, is arguably one of the most important public health goals in the nation," Lee said. "Studying the effect of Internet use on cancer fatalism is important, considering that the Internet has become a new, very crucial source of health information for the American public these days. These findings have important implications since we showed that the Internet may be a very effective channel of health communication especially for people with low socioeconomic status."

### Socioeconomic Disparities in Fatalistic Beliefs About Cancer Prevention, By Chul-joo Lee, Jeff Niederdeppe and Derek Freres; Journal of Communication DOI 10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01683.x http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1460-2466.2012.01683.x/abstract.

Contact: To schedule an interview with the author or a copy of the research, please contact John Paul Gutierrez.

About ICA The International Communication Association is an academic association for scholars interested in the study, teaching, and application of all aspects of human and mediated communication. With more than 4,300 members in 80 countries, ICA includes 26 divisions and interest groups and publishes the Communication Yearbook and five major, peer-reviewed journals: Journal of Communication, Communication Theory, Human Communication Research, Communication, Culture & Critique, and the Journal of Computer-Mediated Communication. For more information, visit www.icahdq.org. END

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

Patients' health service use

2012-12-10

Primary care physicians Johannes Hauswaldt, Eva Hummers-Pradier, and Ulrike Junius-Walker address the question of how frequently different patient groups attend doctor's appointments in this issue of Deutsches Ärzteblatt International (Dtsch Arztebl Int 2012; 109[47]: 814–20). Current estimates for Germany are of 18 doctor's appointments per patient per year. However, until now there has been no further information on, for example, age groups or whether frequent contact with doctors is particularly noticeable in particular patient groups. The authors defined patient ...

The greatest medical resource you've never heard of: Rochester epidemiology project

2012-12-10

ROCHESTER, Minn. -- It's the medical resource behind discoveries that have affected patients around the globe, treasured by researchers and funded by the National Institutes of Health for nearly 50 years: the Rochester Epidemiology Project. This comprehensive medical records pool makes Olmsted County, Minn., one of the few places in the world where scientists can study virtually an entire geographic population to identify trends in disease, evaluate treatments and find factors that put people at risk for illness — or protect them. And, as it nears the half-century mark, ...

Researchers reveal structure of carbon's 'Hoyle state'

2012-12-10

A North Carolina State University researcher has taken a "snapshot" of the way particles combine to form carbon-12, the element that makes all life on Earth possible. And the picture looks like a bent arm. Carbon-12 can only exist when three alpha particles, or helium-4 nuclei, combine in a very specific way. This combination is known as the Hoyle state. NC State physicist Dean Lee and German colleagues Evgeny Epelbaum, Hermann Krebs and Ulf-G. Meissner had previously confirmed the existence of the Hoyle state using a numerical lattice that allowed the researchers to ...

Detecting tunnels using seismic waves not as simple as it sounds

2012-12-10

ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — You'd think it would be easy to use seismic waves to find tunnels dug by smugglers of drugs, weapons or people. You'd be wrong. Nedra Bonal of Sandia's geophysics and atmospheric sciences organization is nearing the end of a two-year study, "Improving Shallow Tunnel Detection From Surface Seismic Methods," aimed at getting a better look at the ground around tunnels and learning why seismic data finds some tunnels but not others. Her eventual goal is to come up with a seismic detection process for the border and other areas where tunnels pose ...

Alcohol pricing policies save lives and increase profits, experts say

2012-12-10

For immediate release – Dec. 10, 2012 (Toronto) – Setting minimum prices for alcohol increases health and economic benefits, say international experts, who met today for a seminar on alcohol pricing and public health. The meeting — sponsored by the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH), the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia (CARBC) and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse (CCSA) — focused on new analyses on Ontario and other provinces where minimum pricing policies have been implemented for a number of years. Alcohol costs the Canadian economy ...

The chemistry of early photographs: New American Chemical Society video

2012-12-10

WASHINGTON, Dec. 10, 2012 — The chemistry of early photography comes under the lens in a new episode of Bytesize Science, the American Chemical Society (ACS) award-winning video series. Produced by the ACS Office of Public Affairs, it is available at www.BytesizeScience.com. The video, which features Art Kaplan, of the Getty Conservation Institute, explains that the history of photography is rich with chemical innovations and insights. Early photographers came up with hundreds of different processes to develop images in unique and often beautiful ways. Kaplan describes ...

Space-age ceramics get their toughest test

2012-12-10

Advanced ceramic composites can withstand the ultrahigh operational temperatures projected for hypersonic jet and next generation gas turbine engines, but real-time analysis of the mechanical properties of these space-age materials at ultrahigh temperatures has been a challenge – until now. Researchers with the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE)'s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) have developed the first testing facility that enables CT-scanning of ceramic composites under controlled loads at ultrahigh temperatures and in real-time. Working at Berkeley ...

Study identifies potential new pathway for drug development

2012-12-10

A newly found understanding of receptor signaling may have revealed a better way to design drugs. A study from Nationwide Children's Hospital suggests that a newly identified group of proteins, alpha arrestins, may play a role in cell signaling that is crucial to new drug development. The study appears in PLOS ONE. More than one-third of drugs on the market work by targeting G protein-coupled receptors that control how cells communicate and function. With many hundreds of members, G protein-coupled receptors are the largest family of signaling receptors throughout the ...

Infants with severe RSV disease may be immunosuppressed

2012-12-10

Infants with severe lower respiratory tract infection caused by respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) may have a dysfunctional innate immune response that relates to the severity of their disease. These are the findings from a Nationwide Children's Hospital study appearing in a recent issue of the Journal of Infectious Diseases. RSV is the leading cause of lower respiratory tract infection in young children worldwide. The majority of children hospitalized with this condition are previously healthy with no known risk factors for serious disease. Of these infants, up to 20 ...

Caffeinated coffee may reduce the risk of oral cancers

2012-12-10

ATLANTA – December 10, 2012—A new American Cancer Society study finds a strong inverse association between caffeinated coffee intake and oral/pharyngeal cancer mortality. The authors say people who drank more than four cups of caffeinated coffee per day were at about half the risk of death of these often fatal cancers compared to those who only occasionally or who never drank coffee. The study is published online in the American Journal of Epidemiology. The authors say more research is needed to elucidate the biologic mechanisms that could be at work. Previous epidemiologic ...

The Lancet Psychiatry: Slow tapering plus therapy most effective strategy for stopping antidepressants, finds major meta-analysis

Body image issues in adolescence linked to depression in adulthood

Child sexual exploitation and abuse online surges amid rapid tech change; new tool for preventing abuse unveiled for path forward

ECOG-ACRIN and Caris Life Sciences unveil first findings from a multi-year collaboration to advance AI-powered multimodal tools for breast cancer recurrence risk stratification

New species of tiny pumpkin toadlet discovered in Brazil highlights need for conservation in the mountain forests of Serra do Quiriri

Reciprocity matters--people were more supportive of climate policies in their country if they believed other countries were making significant efforts themselves

Internet use can reduce fatalistic view of cancer

ELSE PRESS RELEASES FROM THIS DATE:

LAST 30 PRESS RELEASES: