Barriers to seeking help for skin cancer detection in rural Australia

In Australia, 80% of newly diagnosed cancers are skin cancers such as melanoma, basal cell carcinoma and squamous cell carcinoma. This rate is five times the global rate. Australians living in regional and remote areas are at greater risk of morbidity from skin cancer. This study aimed to identify barriers to this population seeking help for skin cancer diagnosis. Using the Barriers to Help Seeking Scale the authors surveyed 201 Australians living in regional or remote areas. The mean age was 61.7 years old. This study found that rural Australians with lower levels of education and those over 63 were more likely to respond with barriers to help-seeking for skin cancer detection. Minimising the problem, normalisation and need for control/self control were more likely to be seen in older and less educated participants. Overall this study highlights that rural Australians are a unique population with different barriers to help-seeking for skin cancer detection. Skin cancer awareness and detection interventions should address barriers that are more dominant within specific subgroup of this population to be more effective.   Read the full article here.