UC Irvine

Though widely used by business, industry, academia, and social service agencies as a mass communication vehicle, the effectiveness of newsletters has received limited critical review. The sound research base needed to support the use of newsletters in cancer prevention interventions was not found in the literature. This article details the development, design, use and evaluation of a health behavior model-based monthly newsletter for participants in three community-oriented cancer prevention studies. Depending on the extent of behavior change asked of them, participants reported reading 60-100% of the content. Participants in the three different cancer prevention interventions perceived the newsletters to be informative, accurate, and interesting. Costing as little as $0.36 per participant per issue, this strategy has implications for other types of field studies with similarly educated participants. The adherencepromotion strategy, of which the newsletters were a part, kept the participants in field studies long enough to test the study hypotheses and potentially improve their health, and reduce morbidity and mortality. © 1991.