No abstract

Introduction Breast cancer is easily detectable by mammography and many countries run national screening programs for women as a target group. Yet, the majority of these countries have screening participation rates below the recommended level of 70%. Objective The aim of the present article was to examine a connection between existing health practices and a decision to participate during breast cancer screening. Methods Methodologically, this research was a web panel and quantitative telephone survey. The survey was conducted among 1200 Estonian women in the age group 50–69 years. Statistical data analysis was performed with SPSS using a descriptive and logistic regression model. Results The findings revealed that among different background variables, age and existing health practices significantly influenced the decision-making for participating in the screening. Results also highlighted that the possibility to participate in the screening increased with existing supportive health practices and with the increasing age. Other sociodemographic factors did not have a significant influence on the decision-making of participation. Conclusions There is a need to educate people from an early age about the developments in health practices that could support a healthy lifestyle in terms of individual responsibility. Thus, public health campaigns should not only call for action but also focus on health education in terms of the role of preventive medicine and health practices.

To encourage women to participate in breast and cervical state-paid screening programs, an experiment was conducted, during which easy access was provided to the screening and each woman who had not used the state-paid screening opportunity was addressed through direct communication. Screening coverage after the experiment improved up to 288%, demonstrating the importance of a behavioural economics nudge approach and tailored communication in the overall health communication process provided within the socio-ecological model.

Mg. sc. soc., Rīgas Stradiņa universitātes Komunikācijas fakultātes lektore, bijusi arī bakalaura studiju programmas Sabiedriskās attiecības vadītāja un Valsts prezidenta preses sekretāre. Sadarbībā ar RSU Sabiedrības veselības un sociālās labklājības fakultātes docenti Andu Ķīvīti-Urtāni izveidojusi un vada maģistra studiju starpdisciplināro programmu Veselības komunikācija, vienīgo šāda satura studiju programmu Baltijas valstīs. Zinātniskās intereses saistītas ar sociālekoloģiskās pieejas izmantošanu veselības komunikācijā. Ilgstoši strādājusi par Pasaules Bankas konsultanti komunikācijas jautājumos, vairāk nekā 20 gadu praktiskā pieredze veselības un sociālajā komunikācijā, vadījusi gan starptautiskus, gan Latvijas projektus. Saņēmusi Latvijas Ministru kabineta un Labklājības ministrijas atzinības rakstus par veiksmīgi vadītām komunikācijas kampaņām. Bijusi Latvijas Asociācijas sabiedrisko attiecību profesionāļiem (LASAP) pirmā prezidente. Publicistisku un zinātnisku rakstu autore. Zane Gorškova, Mg. sc. soc., ir Rīgas Stradiņa universitātes Komunikācijas fakultātes absolvente. Bakalaura grāds komunikācijas zinātnē iegūts Latvijas Universitātē. Profesionālās darba gaitas komunikācijas nozarē. Pēdējie pieci gadi aizvadīti valsts pārvaldē, strādājot par komunikācijas speciālisti. Zinātniskās un profesionālās intereses saistītas ar stratēģisko komunikāciju un uzvedības maiņas komunikāciju.

The prospective health care consumers are increasingly using the Internet websites for communication with potential health care service providers and decision-making regarding choice of the travel destination for receiving particular health care services. Therefore, it is important for health care providers to present themselves and their services efficiently online in order to attract foreign patients and thus facilitate medical tourism. The objective of this study is to evaluate the website content of Latvian health care providers who offer services to medical tourists in order to evaluate their status-quo and identify opportunities to improve website design. Authors used the framework by Huerta et al. (2016) as a basis to develop a modified framework suited for medical tourism-related website evaluation. 21 active websites associated with a medical tourism and provision of health care services to foreign patients were identified and selected for analysis. Each website was evaluated using a 10-factor assessment on 4 dimensions that include website accessibility, content, marketing, technology on a scale ranging from 0 to 10. Results: Scores of 21 website evaluation ranged from 54 to 91 point across all 4 dimensions with 80 and above points being considered as excellent result. Conclusions: Study findings indicated that the main improvements should be related to accessibility dimension and enabling text resizing function for improving experience for patients with poor sight, information dimension in terms of developing a separate main level section with information exclusively for foreign patients, and marketing dimension to improve effectiveness of search engine optimization (SEO) for medical tourism related keywords.