Should a letter followed by a phone call to remind vs. a letter alone be used for inviting women to subsequent breast cancer screening rounds?

The GDG made a conditional recommendation for the intervention, based on desirable anticipated effects and equity. 

The GDG noted that for the subgroup of women who had a false positive results in the previous screening round the intervention may have moderate costs due to the smaller number of women involved. 

• The comparison evaluated for this recommendation needs to be interpreted in the context of the other comparisons on methods for inviting women to screening programmes evaluated by ECIBC.
• The GDG considered that in certain countries it may not be feasible to implement due to the additional resources required to call women for phone reminders.
• The GDG noted that implementation will have to consider access to cell phones or land lines for women to receive reminder calls and whether laws limiting access to and use of phone numbers for contacting women are applicable in the specific context.
• The recommendation does not cover informed choice, due to a lack of evidence on this important outcome. The GDG suggests that informed choice is an important implementation consideration for this intervention.

• The GDG recommends research on the effect of this intervention on other important outcomes such as informed decision-making.
• Research evaluating the use of electronic messages including e-mail, social media and SMS as compared to paper letters for invitation to screening.