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Kaiser Kids Sun Care Program

An Evidence-Based Practice

Description

The Kaiser Kids Sun Care Program is a skin cancer prevention program directed at parents and their young children. The program incorporates sun protection promotion into child well-care visits. Parents take young children to several well-care visits and because these visits are not focused on the treatment of illness but rather on disease prevention, they provide an opportunity to incorporate cancer prevention into pediatric care. Focusing on skin cancer prevention early in the lifetime is very important; a single severe sunburn in early life may double the risk of melanoma 2-fold.

The sun protection messages are delivered by clinician to parents at all well-care visits when the child is between 2 and 36 months old. The clinicians are reminded to give the sun protection messages to the parents by reminders placed in medical records prior to the patient visit. The clinicians are trained how to best deliver the recommended messages and a packet for the parents to take home, "Sun Protection Tips." The 6-month packet includes a sunscreen sample and the 12-month packet includes ultraviolet protection sunglasses for the child.

Goal / Mission

To increase sun protection behaviors in early childhood.

Results / Accomplishments

The Kaiser Kids Sun Care Program was evaluated through a randomized controlled trial. Clinicians in 14 primary care practices of Kaiser Permanente of Colorado delivered the intervention to child-parent pairs during child well-care visits and 14 other practices served as controls. The results of the intervention evaluation showed that among the 728 participating child-parent pairs, the intervention group reported using significantly more sun protection strategies and at higher frequencies compared to the control group at both the two- and three-year follow-up interviews (p<0.05).

About this Promising Practice

Organization(s)
Kaiser Permanente, National Cancer Institute
Primary Contact
Lori Crane, PhD
Department of Preventive Medicine and Biometrics
University of Colorado at Denver
Health Sciences Center
4200 East 9th Avenue, Box B-119
Denver, CO 8026
(303) 724-4385
lori.crane@uchsc.edu
https://www.kaiserpermanente.org/
Topics
Health / Cancer
Health / Wellness & Lifestyle
Organization(s)
Kaiser Permanente, National Cancer Institute
Source
Research-tested Intervention Programs
Date of publication
2006
Location
Colorado
For more details
Target Audience
Children, Families
Michigan Health Improvement Alliance