Thread by @igorfrancetic

🥳Thrilled to see this work with stellar co-authors @RachelMeacock and @MattXSutton out on JEBO! doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo…
This project came about as a natural intersection of the two projects that brought me to @HOPE_UoM, that is #spillovers and early #cancer detection. 1/N

We explore responses of people exposed to the bowel cancer screening program (BCSP), which until 2021 invited people aged 60 to 75 to participate to a screening via a home-based test kit. Participation to this program hasn't been great for many reasons 💩 2/N

There was evidence of differences in uptake based on gender and marital status. Yet, all previous studies on BCSP stopped at associations. We used an interacted polynomial regression approach to study differential responses around the sharp eligibility threshold at age 60. 3/N

We study how individuals respond, depending on the previous screening decisions of their cohabiting partners. Individuals with screened older partners are 42 perc. points more likely to screen than individuals with non-screened older partners and singles. 4/N

This suggests that being married *per se* doesn't matter for screening. Individuals' behaviours are malleable and influenced by the behaviour of their partners. Effect heterogeneity suggest that learning sharing information between partners is the most likely channel. 5/N

Hopefully, some room for improvement in screening programmes. Huge thanks to #APHEC @UniGenova workshop organisers and participants, Prof. @JoanCostaiFont for an insightful discussion of the paper, editor&reviewers at JEBO for helping us to massively improve the paper. 6/6