ArticleHealth education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education2016
Cancer Fatalism, Literacy, and Cancer Information Seeking in the American Public.
Article in Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education, 2016. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 89 papers.
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Who cites it
89 citing papers in PubMed, 140 citations in OpenAlex.
- The mediating role of social support in behavioral changes and weight loss outcomes among overweight Appalachian adults.Journal of behavioral medicine · 2025Trial
- Perceived effectiveness of messages to address cervical cancer screening barriers: An online experiment.PloS one · 2025Trial
- Exploring the role of cancer fatalism and engagement with skin cancer genetic information in diverse primary care patients.Psycho-oncology · 2024Trial
- A Cardiovascular Health Intervention for Spanish Speakers: The Health Literacy and ESL Curriculum.Journal of community health · 2018Trial
- The Role of Cancer-Related Fatalistic Beliefs and Perceived Information Ambiguity in Lung Cancer Screening Uptake.Clinical journal of oncology nursing · 2026Article
- Subjective Financial Strain and Fatalistic Beliefs about Cancer Among U.S. Adults: A Cross-Sectional Study.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2026Article
- Early esophageal cancer diagnosis in Central Oromia, Ethiopia: patient and provider perspectives on barriers and facilitators.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- Cancer information seeking and awareness of multi-cancer detection tests among U.S. adults: a cross-sectional study.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2026Article
- How Information-Seeking Reduces Cancer Fatalism: A Comparison of the Mediating Role of Risk Perception in Young and Older Adults.Journal of cancer education : the official journal of the American Association for Cancer Education · 2026Article
- Associations Between Health Information Sources, Sociodemographic and Clinical Characteristics, and Decision-Making Among Women with Early-Stage Breast Cancer.Research square · 2026Article
- Effect of social stressors and social determinants of health (SDOH) on cancer beliefs: Analysis of a cancer center catchment area.Journal of psychosocial oncology · 2026Article
- Disparity in cancer literacy by socioeconomic status.BMC public health · 2026Article
- The relationship between information overload, adjustment to cancer, and level of health perception in patients with cancer: a descriptive cross-sectional study.Sao Paulo medical journal = Revista paulista de medicina · 2026Article
- Helpful or harmful? How cancer beliefs and information seeking relate to depression in U.S. adults.PloS one · 2026Article
- Cancer prevention in Germany: awareness, beliefs, and information-seeking behaviors in a population-based survey.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- The role of health literacy in boosting citizen engagement in appropriate use of antibiotics.Journal of public health (Oxford, England) · 2025Article
- Sustainment of Tobacco Use Treatment Programs Across National Cancer Institute-Designated Cancer Centers.Cancer medicine · 2025Article
- Beliefs about the effects of health behaviors on cancer risk: findings from the 2022 Health Information National Trends Survey.Cancer causes & control : CCC · 2025Article
- Thematic Analysis of Smoking Cessation and Future Cessation Interventions for Cancer Survivors: Convenience Sampling Study.JMIR formative research · 2025Article
- Patients' perceptions on reasons for self-referring to the emergency department shortly before a cancer diagnosis: a qualitative study.The British journal of general practice : the journal of the Royal College of General Practitioners · 2025Article
29 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
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Authors and funding
2 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
Abstract
Information seeking is an important behavior for cancer prevention and control, but inequalities in the communication of information about the disease persist. Conceptual models have suggested that low health literacy is a barrier to information seeking, and that fatalistic beliefs about cancer may be a mediator of this relationship. Cancer fatalism can be described as deterministic thoughts about the external causes of the disease, the inability to prevent it, and the inevitability of death at diagnosis. This study aimed to examine the associations between these constructs and sociodemographic factors, and test a mediation model using the American population-representative Health Information and National Trends Survey (HINTS 4), Cycle 3 (n = 2,657). Approximately one third (34%) of the population failed to answer 2/4 health literacy items correctly (limited health literacy). Many participants agreed with the fatalistic beliefs that it seems like everything causes cancer (66%), that one cannot do much to lower his or her chances of getting cancer (29%), and that thinking about cancer makes one automatically think about death (58%). More than half of the population had "ever" sought information about cancer (53%). In analyses adjusted for sociodemographic characteristics and family cancer history, people with limited health literacy were less likely to have ever sought cancer information (odds ratio [OR] = 0.63; 0.42-0.95) and more frequently endorsed the belief that "there's not much you can do . . ." (OR = 1.61; 1.05-2.47). This fatalistic belief partially explained the relationship between health literacy and information seeking in the mediation model (14% mediation). Interventions are needed to address low health literacy and cancer fatalism to increase public interest in cancer-related information.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.