Hair Stylists Promote Breast Cancer Prevention Messages to Clients

Authors of a Brooklyn, N.Y., study say hair stylists might be a good resource for both healthy hair and information on breast cancer prevention. However, it is not clear if learning about breast health practices at the beauty shop has a significant effect on client’s health behavior.

Hair stylists “are an institutionalized resource in the community and we consider them leaders in an environment that a lot of people come through,” said Dr. Ruth Browne, principle investigator of the new study.

Women in the African-American community often have a regular source of hair care, but might not have a similar resource for health information, said Browne, head of the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health in Brooklyn.

As part of the study, 29 stylists from three Brooklyn neighborhoods participated in two two-hour workshops to learn about encouraging clients to practice three breast health behaviors: conducting monthly breast self-examinations, getting annual clinical breast exams from a health care professional and — for women 40 years and older — undergoing routine mammography.

Researchers later surveyed the clients of the stylists who had attended the training. They compared the responses of those clients with survey responses from clients of hair stylists not exposed to the health information training.

More than 1,200 women participated in the study. Ninety-two percent of the stylists and clients identified themselves as African-American, Afro-Caribbean or of African ancestry.

The study appears in the latest issue of the Journal of Health Care for the Poor and Underserved.

Thirty-seven percent of women who had visited one of the experimental salons reported hearing breast health messages from their stylists, compared with 10 percent of women at the control sites.

These messages appeared to have little influence: women who had appointments at experimental salons were no more likely to do self-breast exams, receive clinical breast exams or have a mammogram, the study found.

Nevertheless, researchers did find that women who had heard breast health messages in the last three months were significantly more likely to have completed monthly self-breast exams, compared to women who had not heard breast messages.

Women who had recently heard about breast health also reported greater intentions to have a clinical breast exam.

“While there’s intent, we don’t have documented evidence of action,” said Therese Bevers, M.D., medical director of the Cancer Prevention Center at the University of Texas M. D. Anderson Cancer Center in Houston. She was not involved in the Brooklyn study.

Bevers noted that the study found stylists had a decreased willingness to discuss breast health after training. Stylists might have “realized that breast health messages may be harder to communicate accurately, and that they may give wrong messages,” which could lead to reluctance to get involved, Bevers said.