News outlets may not address some underlying reasons for current breast cancer screening guidelines, according to research published March 2 in JAMA Network Open.
While the media has often been consistent in reporting the basic details of mammography guidelines set by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force (USPSTF), coverage has “rarely” addressed overdiagnosis and informed decision-making in reference to the new guidelines, noted a team led by doctoral candidate Tamar Parmet from the University of Colorado, Denver, and colleagues.
“The USPSTF presented a strong case for informed decision-making across all its recommendation levels, and since consensus is lacking on breast cancer screening initiation age and frequency across guidelines, it remains critical to promote informed decisions for screening,” Parmet and colleagues wrote.
The USPSTF in 2024 updated its breast cancer screening guidelines to biennial screening for women starting at age 40, a B-grade recommendation. This differs from the task force’s previous guidelines, which put the spotlight on informed decision-making for women ages 40 to 49.
The researchers noted that the 2024 guidelines do not reiterate the USPSTF’s broader stance on informed decision-making. They warned that this could make way for a communication gap between the USPSTF’s stance on informed decision-making and language appearing in the updated guidelines.
Parmet and co-authors studied whether media coverage of the updated guidelines has covered both the new recommendations and the USPSTF’s stance on informed decision-making.
The team sampled from outlets included in the Pew Research Center, which reports news outlets by political orientation. These included 22 news outlets, with 13 being left-leaning, nine being right-leaning, and one being center-leaning. Final analysis included 25 news articles from these outlets.
The researchers reported no discernible differences by news outlet political leaning, and all articles discussed the recommended screening age and frequency. But none of the articles mentioned the USPSTF’s broader stance on informed decision-making.
The group also reported the following findings:
Twenty-six articles highlighted the increased incidence of breast cancer, and 28 discussed racial disparities.
Thirty-three articles described the benefits of breast cancer screening, and 27 explicitly highlighted breast cancer deaths prevented.
False-positive results (25 articles) and follow-up biopsies (19 articles) were the most often cited harms stemming from screening. But only seven articles mentioned overdiagnosis.
Twenty-six articles mentioned informed decision-making, with 23 mentioning it in reference to the previous USPSTF guidelines. Only five articles discussed informed decision-making relating to the new guidelines.
The study authors noted that only web-based, written materials were included, meaning “some information accessed by the public may have been missed.”
Understanding the context of media messaging about public health decisions when guidelines shift is important to study, according to an accompanying editorial written by Sarah Gollust, PhD, from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.
Gollust wrote that future research should explore the types of messages patients and families receive from news media when it comes to medical guidelines shifting toward informed decision-making. This includes messages from social media and other information sources.
Read the full study here.
