Oral Presentation Skin Cancer 2024

Mobilizing sun safety messages in the construction industry (#59)

Lindsay Forsman-Phillips 1 2 , Raissa Shrestha 1 2 , Ela Rydz 1 3 , D. Linn Holness 4 5 6 , Sunil Kalia 7 8 , Thomas Tenkate 9 , Cheryl E Peters 1 2 7 10
  1. CAREX Canada - UBC, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  2. School of Population and Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  3. Department of Community Health Sciences, Cumming School of Medicine, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada
  4. Occupational Medicine Division, St. Michael's Hospital, Toronto, ON, Canada
  5. Dalla Lana School of Public Health, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
  6. Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
  7. BC Cancer, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  8. Department of Dermatology and Skin Science, Faculty of Medicine, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
  9. School of Occupational and Public Health , Toronto Metropolitan University, Toronto, ON, Canada
  10. BC Centre for Disease Control, Vancouver, BC, Canada

Skin cancer is on the rise in Canada. Outdoor workers are at particularly high risk, and there are approximately 1.7M outdoor workers in Canada. Sun safety messaging has focused on the general public, emphasizing changing how or when activities occur to reduce exposure. Outdoor workers are at increased risk due to long outdoor working hours and limited ability to change activities at peak exposure times. To address this, the research team developed a core set of evidence-based, practical, harm‐reducing sun safety messages that is likely to strongly resonate with outdoor workers. The primary goal was to mobilize the sun safety messages in order to influence behaviour change among outdoor workers in the construction industry in British Columbia.

We learned from stakeholders that uptake will be different across industries, so we surveyed and convened experts in the construction industry, occupational solar UVR exposure and epidemiology, dermatologists, policymakers, and labour organizations to clarify that the sun safety messages were appropriate for construction workers and further refined the messages. Along with the expert group we identified knowledge translation (KT) products that would be most effective in mobilizing the sun safety messages. We pursued identified KT opportunities with stakeholders in the construction industry to co-develop evidence-based KT products using an iterative and collaborative approach in order to be meaningful to the organization and their audience. Provincial regulators and other key stakeholders were approached to coordinate efforts to mobilize the KT products and to help build a culture of sun safety in the workplace.