Do mass media affect Medicare beneficiaries' use of diabetes services?

Background: Appropriate secondary preventive care for people with diabetes can reduce complications and premature death, yet many people with diabetes do not get these services. Mass media may influence individual health behavior.

Methods: In 1999, the West Virginia Medical Institute (WVMI) began a long-term radio and television campaign to educate West Virginia Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes about the importance of foot exams, eye exams, HbA1c testing, and influenza and pneumonia immunizations using messages with an "Ask your doctor about..." formula. To assess campaign efficacy, WVMI commissioned a telephone survey of 1500 randomly selected beneficiaries likely to have diabetes in two groups of counties with differing exposure to the messages. The survey asked whether the beneficiary had heard the messages and responded to them, by message topic.

Results: Nearly everyone (90%) in both survey groups said they had seen or heard the diabetes ads. However, high-exposure group members were about 1.2 times more likely to recall hearing most messages than low-exposure group members, and were 1.2 to 1.8 times more likely to say that they did what the messages suggested.

Conclusions: Media campaigns with preventive health messages targeted to Medicare beneficiaries with diabetes can reach them and may induce appropriate responses.