Testing the long-term effects of the Go Sun Smart worksite health communication campaign: A group-randomized experimental study

This study examined the long-term effects of the Go Sun Smart (GSS) campaign, a large-scale health communication intervention designed to promote sun safety to employees at 26 ski areas in western North America. Employees were enrolled in a pair-matched group-randomized pretest-posttest controlled design with 2 follow-up surveys. Half of the ski areas were randomly assigned to implement GSS in the winter. This article reports analyses of a hierarchical linear design with responses from 1,463 employees who completed the second follow-up survey at the end of the following summer (69% of those who completed the first posttest). GSS continued to have positive effects on employees who worked at intervention ski areas into the summer. Employees exposed to GSS reported less sunburning, engaged in more sun safety behaviors, were more aware of the program, and had more discussions of sun safety at home than employees at matched control group resorts. The long-term effects of GSS support recommending that sun protection programs be implemented at workplaces, but such programs should be implemented with high fidelity to achieve maximum benefits. Despite limitations due to nonresponse, geography, measurement, and ethnicity, the hierarchical clustered design improved the internal validity and generalizability of the findings.