Warum haben Sie HINTS USA vor 15 Jahren gestartet?

We were charged by the National Cancer Institute to develop a program to provide an evidence base for developing communication programs to reduce the national cancer burden by promoting cancer prevention and control. There was not good information about what they needed to do. And who needed the information. So the HINTS-Survey - the Health Information National Trends Survey - was designed to provide that evidence. So they could provide targeted health promotion programs.

Was sind die drei wichtigsten Ergebnisse aus der letzten Studie?

There has been a lot of wonderful results. One of the primary things that has happened with the survey was identifying groups that have big information gaps ... who don't have the information, so we could develop targeted programs for adapting to their needs.
Another big issue was finding out which media people will utilize to get health information and then to utilize those media effectively.
The third thing was to identify what differences there were between different groups. And which were the ones that were at greatest risk. And so we could develop programs  - and also to track the programs that we already developed to see whether people recognize the messages, and the strategies and the campaigns that already were developed.

Welche Veränderungen haben Sie innerhalb der 15 Jahre beobachtet?

Originally, when we first started HINTS, we did it every other year. But the data was so important, things were changing so rapidly, that we came to an annual administration of the survey. We conducted it every year now. And we also expanded it to a variety of different areas.
When I left the National Cancer Institute I also wanted to study populations that were undeserved, that were not being represented by the national data. And so there is a lot of supplemental studies that are being conducted. In fact, 450 articles have been published with supplemental studies of HINTS data in the US.

Was erwarten Sie für die Zukunft?

One of the really exciting things that is happen with HINTS is that we are trying to make it into a global tool. To try to understand what is happening in other countries. About six years ago we began conducting HINTS in China. Which is the second major country to do that work. And we've just brought it to renew it for another five years of conducting that survey there. We are doing some very interesting cross national comparisons. We are very excited about starting it in Germany. And we are planing it in many other regions of the world as well.

Was erwarten Sie für HINTS Germany?

Well that's going to be based on what we find. We are expecting that there will be some areas of similarity between the US and Germany and perhaps even with China. But we don't know until we see those data. But what we'll do is that it will give us very targeted information about where the information problems are. And what are the best strategies for promoting health in Germany - both at the regional and national level.

Wissen ist gesund.