Promoting men’s knowledge of cancer risk reduction: A systematic review of interventions

Mary Reidy, Mohamad M Saab, Josephine Hegarty, Christian Von Wagner, Mairin O'Mahony, Mike Murphy, Frances J Drummond

To critically appraise and discuss evidence from interventions designed to increase men's knowledge about cancer risk reduction. A systematic review was conducted. Six electronic databases were searched for interventions published between January 1st 2006 and May 30th 2016 in English. Studies were included if they used an experimental design, included adult males (≥18 years), and had a primary focus on the acquisition and utilisation of information on cancer risk reduction. The methodological quality of the included studies was appraised. A total of 25 studies met the inclusion criteria, 23 of which involved prostate cancer risk reduction. Twenty-one studies reported knowledge gain among the men. Three studies found that knowledge gain was associated with health literacy. Interventions aiming to improve men's knowledge about cancer risk reduction require a multimodal approach. Findings highlight the need to design and measure the impact of interventions for men on wider cancer risk reduction topics, while accounting for different socio-demographic and ethnic groups, literacy and health literacy levels. More research is warranted into the development and evaluation of theoretically-driven multimodal community-based approaches to information dissemination for men taking into account their daily information spheres such as workplaces and community environs.