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Compliance with public health recommendations of cancer-free female research volunteers: the French Seintinelles study

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Abstract

Purpose

Acting on modifiable risk factors can prevent approximately 40% of cancers. Knowing the factors that lead people to adopt healthy behaviors is crucial for designing effective primary prevention campaigns. Our study attempts to provide knowledge in this direction.

Methods

This cross-sectional study was conducted via the Seintinelles collaborative research platform in a community of women without a personal cancer history, and volunteering to take online questionnaires. We collected data on sociodemographic and health factors, knowledge of cancer risk factors, behaviors, and possible behavior changes (tobacco/alcohol use, diet, body weight, and physical activity) in the last 10 years.

Results

The study involved 1465 women aged between 18 and 84 years. Factors such as young age, living alone, and obesity were associated with some positive or negative behavior changes. Being professionally active and having comorbidities favored certain positive behavior changes, while having dependent children, living in a rural area, and being hospitalized were associated with negative or no change in behaviors. Lack of knowledge about modifiable risk factors for cancer was associated with the non-adoption of various healthy behaviors (consumptions of fruit and vegetables, processed and red meat; physical activity). Only 5.5% of participants currently reported to be compliant with seven public health recommendations (smoking; alcohol, fruit/vegetables, and red/processed meat intakes; body mass index; and physical activity).

Conclusions

This study allowed to identify the need to increase the level of knowledge on modifiable risk factors for cancer among the general population and to better clarify the content of prevention messages.

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Fig. 1

Note: For the participants who were smokers 10 years ago, and who declared that they had started e-cigarettes, we did not have information to know whether, at the same time, they had stopped or only reduced, or changed nothing in their tobacco consumption. This explains the use of this category as its own. Comparisons by Fisher’s exact test between alcohol increase and alcohol decrease; between fruit and vegetables increase and fruit and vegetables decrease; between processed meat increase and processed meat decrease; between body weight gain and body weight loss; between physical activity cessation/reduction and physical activity increase, were significant (p < 0.0001). In the cases of consumption of red meat and smoking, because of too small numbers in one of the groups, statistical comparisons were not made

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Data availability

The datasets generated during and/or analyzed during the current study are not publicly available because informed consent from study participants did not cover public deposition of data but are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

We gratefully acknowledge the ARC Foundation for Cancer Research in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (INCa) for the financial support of this project. We would like to thank the “Seintinelles” volunteers who made this research possible.

Funding

This work was supported by the ARC Foundation for Cancer Research in partnership with the National Cancer Institute (INCa) [2016 Funding call—Tertiary prevention in oncology—Action 8.7 (PREV201601258, March 1, 2017)].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Université Paris-Saclay, UVSQ, Inserm, Gustave Roussy, CESP, 114 Rue Edouard Vaillant, 94805, Villejuif, France

    Alexandra-Cristina Paunescu & Marina Kvaskoff

  2. CERPOP UMR1295 Inserm, Université de Toulouse III, UPS, Toulouse, France

    Cyrille Delpierre

  3. Association « Seintinelles. Contre Le Cancer, Tous Volontaires ». 40 Rue Rémy Dumoncel, 75014, Paris, France

    Guillemette Jacob & Lidia Delrieu

  4. Residual Tumor & Response to Treatment Laboratory, RT2Lab, Translational Research Department, INSERM, U932 Immunity and Cancer, Institut Curie, Paris, France

    Lidia Delrieu

  5. Institut de Psychologie, UR GRePS, Université Lumière Lyon 2, Bron, France

    Myriam Pannard & Marie Préau

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  1. Alexandra-Cristina Paunescu
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Contributions

MK, CD, MP, and MyP contributed to the study conception and design; GJ, LD, and ACP contributed to material preparation and data collection. ACP carried out the statistical analyses and wrote the first draft of the article. All authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Alexandra-Cristina Paunescu.

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Conflict of interest

The authors have no relevant financial or non-financial interests to disclose.

Ethical approval

The project has been approved by the “Comité de Protection des Personnes Nord-Ouest II” on 12 July 2020 (File #20.05.26.59658; EudraCT/ID-RCB: #2020-A01545-34).

Consent to participate

All Seintinelles volunteers received the necessary information about the study and gave their informed consent to participate online, on the Seintinelles platform.

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Paunescu, AC., Delpierre, C., Jacob, G. et al. Compliance with public health recommendations of cancer-free female research volunteers: the French Seintinelles study. Cancer Causes Control 35, 293–309 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-023-01788-7

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