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Institute of Epidemiology & Health Care

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Conversation Time: Exploring predictors of receptiveness to a discussion about physical activity and cancer prevention

The healthcare context is thought to be an appropriate setting for providing patients with advice about behaviour change for cancer prevention. However, healthcare professionals have concerns about raising lifestyle issues with patients who may not be receptive to these conversations. The development of a tool to help healthcare professionals to identify those receptive to these conversations would be of value. However, there is a need to first identify predictors of receptiveness. Cancer screening has been identified as a time when individuals may be more receptive, but this has not been formally tested, and there is mixed evidence to support the idea that individuals improve their health behaviours following attendance at these appointments. There is therefore a need to improve not only our understanding of the factors that predict an individual's receptiveness to advice about behaviour change, but also to explore the importance of the cancer screening context within this. This project aims to explore the feasibility of identifying potential predictors of receptiveness to a conversation about physical activity (PA) and cancer prevention within the bowel cancer screening context, using ecological momentary assessments (EMA).

Principal investigator: Dr Rebecca Beeken

Collaborators: Katherine Bradbury (University of Southampton), Mangesh Thorat & Chao Wang (QMUL), Daniel Powell (University of Aberdeen), Meghana Kamble (UEA), Grace Okoli (KCL)

Contact: Dr Rebecca Beeken (r.beeken[at]ucl.ac.uk)