Introduction
Monitoring sun protection behaviour trends is vital to informing and evaluating skin cancer prevention programs. Despite high skin cancer rates and considerable prevention investment in Australia, there has been no national-level monitoring of sun protection behaviours since 2016-17, until now. We outline the methods and present the first results of the Cancer Council-funded 2023-24 Australian Sun Protection Module.
Method
The Sun Protection Module is contained in the Australian Bureau of Statistics’ (ABS) Multipurpose Household Survey (MPHS). Data were collected via telephone interviews with >8,000 Australians aged 15+ years from November 2023 to February 2024. Questions included sunburn and sun exposure (last week), five sun protection behaviours (most recent day outdoors), daily sunscreen use, attempts to suntan, and skin sensitivity and socio-demographics. Date and location data allows incorporation of weather variables to facilitate future trends analysis.
Results
The results and data will be housed on the ABS platforms in three formats: a summary report and options to generated additional outputs (via Tablebuilder summary tables, and Datalab unit level records). First results (released September 2024) will include national population estimates for all sun protection behaviours, overall and by age, gender, skin sensitivity and other socio-demographics.
Conclusions
The Sun Protection Module provides high quality representative behavioural data to inform skin cancer prevention interventions and monitor changes in sun protection behaviours in Australia. Inclusion within the ABS survey has delivered survey numbers unlikely to have been achieved elsewhere. Data will be available to support skin cancer prevention across public health and research communities.