Guidance
This guideline covers how to communicate the risks and benefits of natural sunlight exposure (specifically, the ultraviolet rays UVA and UVB) to help people understand why they may need to modify their behaviour to reduce their risk of skin cancer and vitamin D deficiency.
This guideline should be read with NICE’s guideline on vitamin D: supplement use in specific population groups and any recommendations made by the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) on vitamin D.
Recommendations
This guideline includes recommendations on:
- at-risk groups
- communicating consistent balanced messages (message content)
- mass media campaigns to raise awareness of the risks and benefits
- local strategies to raise awareness among at-risk groups
The guideline also includes supporting information for practitioners.
Who is it for?
Commissioners, managers and practitioners with public health or social care as part of their remit working within the NHS, local authorities and the wider public, private, voluntary and community sectors.
Guideline development process
How we develop NICE guidelines
This guideline replaces recommendations 1 to 5 in NICE’s guideline on skin cancer prevention (PH32).
Your responsibility
The recommendations in this guideline represent the view of NICE, arrived at after careful consideration of the evidence available. When exercising their judgement, professionals and practitioners are expected to take this guideline fully into account, alongside the individual needs, preferences and values of their patients or the people using their service. It is not mandatory to apply the recommendations, and the guideline does not override the responsibility to make decisions appropriate to the circumstances of the individual, in consultation with them and their families and carers or guardian.
All problems (adverse events) related to a medicine or medical device used for treatment or in a procedure should be reported to the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency using the Yellow Card Scheme.
Local commissioners and providers of healthcare have a responsibility to enable the guideline to be applied when individual professionals and people using services wish to use it. They should do so in the context of local and national priorities for funding and developing services, and in light of their duties to have due regard to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, to advance equality of opportunity and to reduce health inequalities. Nothing in this guideline should be interpreted in a way that would be inconsistent with complying with those duties.
Commissioners and providers have a responsibility to promote an environmentally sustainable health and care system and should assess and reduce the environmental impact of implementing NICE recommendations wherever possible.