A study led by New Zealand epidemiologists suggests that dermatology-led efforts to scare young people about skin cancer may actually be causing a decline in skin cancer awareness in older people who are most likely to get the disease.

“Anecdotally, it seems that a lot of people seem to think that melanoma is a young persons’ disease,” Dr. Mary Jane Sneyd, from New Zealand’s University of Otago’s Hugh Adam Cancer Epidemiology Unit, told the New Zealand press this week. “That is probably because the media have often concentrated on this age group, and promotion of sun safety seems to be aimed at the young.”

The effect: “New Zealanders aged 60 and over appear to wrongly believe they are at low risk of the fatal form of skin cancer melanoma, according to a new University of Otago study conducted for the Cancer Society of New Zealand,” New Zealand news source Voxy reported this week.

According to Voxy, “Dr Sneyd looked at the attitudes of a random sample of 777 men and women aged 40 to 70 and found that participants aged 60-plus seem to regard themselves at lower risk of melanoma than younger people, and yet their risk is considerably higher.”

“What we found is that in general, people are estimating their risk reasonably well on the basis of their phenotype, such as that if you are fair or red haired, and blue eyed you have a greater risk, and if you have dark hair, darker skin colour and dark eyes you have a lower risk,” Sneyd told Voxy. “But, as people got older, they saw themselves as having lower risk of melanoma and yet the risk of melanoma goes up greatly with age — as with most cancers.”

According to the New Zealand Ministry of Health of all new melanomas diagnosed, 58.8% occurred in people aged 60 plus, and only 2.4% occurred in people under 30.

Dermatology and chemical sunscreen groups have peppered media in recent years with messages directed at young women — the group most likely to use their products. At the same time, public education efforts aimed at older people, who are less likely to buy high-end skin care products, have almost dried up, despite the fact that they are most at risk for melanoma.

To read the Voxy report click here.