# Presentation: 162354

## You are What you Seek: Exploring Health Information Seeking Mediated By Gender

- Darrell Burke, Ph.D.
- Assistant Professor
- Medical Informatics
- College of Information

## Today’s Journey 

- Why Cancer?
- Selecting a Cancer (Apples-to-Apples)
- Review of Site Specific Cancer Information Seeking

## Today’s Journey 

- Methodology
- Findings
- Policy Implications
- Study Limitations
- Future Work

## 5 Billion/Day

- _5 Billion/Day_

- _[http://www.chcf.org/documents/insurance/HealthCareCosts06.pdf](http://www.chcf.org/documents/insurance/HealthCareCosts06.pdf)_

- Cancer: 72B/Yr

## Selecting a Cancer

- _Prostate_
-  $8B Treatment
- Newly Diagnosed
- 234K/year
- Deaths
- 27K/yr
- Research Funding
- 309M
- Research $/Death
- 11K

- _Breast _
- $8B Treatment
- Newly Diagnosed
- 213K/year
- Deaths
- 41K/yr
- Research Funding
- 560M
- Research $/Death
- 14K

## Facts

- Third leading cause of death by cancer in Men
- African American men have about a 60% higher incidence rate than white men
- African American men have about a 2-fold higher mortality rate than white men

- http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/prostate/incidence.html

## http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/prostate/inc_mort.pdf

## http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/prostate/inc_mort.pdf

## http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/prostate/inc_mort.pdf

## http://seer.cancer.gov/publications/prostate/inc_mort.pdf

## Prostate Information Needs/Uses

- _Pre- treatment_
- Likelihood of Cure, Stage of Disease, Types of treatments (Davison et al, 1995)
- “Will treatment make me impotent?” (Feldman-Steward et al,1998)
-  *Spouses wanted much more information than patient*, More Medical/Technical than Psychosocial, (Krol et al, 2000)
- 90% Used Non-systematic Decision Processes for Selecting a Treatment Option (Steginga et al, 2001)
- _Treatment _
- Comfort Measures, Activity Restrictions (Brandt, 1991)
- _Post Surgery_
- Urinary incontinence, Impotence (Moore & Esty,1999)

## Prostate Information Needs Not Met

- 31% Dissatisfied with all information obtained (Gray et al, 1997)
- 17% felt they were not knowledgeable to make an informed decision (Crawford et al, 1997)
- 30% of men and 25% of their family members report not receiving timely and appropriate information (Prostate Cancer Charity (UK), 2000)

## Prostate Information Sources

- The internet was Identified as a vehicle to provide men an environment to overcome the *“psychosocial masculine attitudes”** that counteract the way in which men “interact with their doctor, use health services, access health information and contemplate their well being*.” (Dragan et al, 2005)
- 24% of prostate cancer patients considered *active seekers* used the internet for prostate information (Hellawell et al, 2000)

## Data Source

- 2003 Health Information National Trends Survey (HINTS) n=6,369
- Collects nationally representative data routinely about the American public's use of cancer-related information. The survey:
- Provides updates on changing patterns, needs, and information opportunities in health
- Identifies changing communications trends and practices
- Assesses cancer information access and usage
- Provides information about how cancer risks are perceived

## Methodology

- SPSS 14
- Descriptive Statistics

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## Take - Aways

- Most men do not normally seek information about cancer
- As expected, seeking information increases with a cancer diagnosis
- Despite the late age at prostate cancer diagnosis the internet remains the largest initial source of initial information
- Education appears related to internet use

## Limitations

- Of the respondents to the survey only whites with prostate cancer reported seeking prostate information
- Findings can only be generalized to responding sample
- Survey Response Bias
- Results used 2003 data

## Next Step

- Include other variables (cancer knowledge, screening, etc)
- Compare sample with 2005 survey
- Explore alternate sources to be more inclusive of the population at risk

## Questions?