Development of a motivational interviewing genetic counseling intervention to increase cascade cholesterol screening in families of children with familial hypercholesterolemia

Motivational interviewing (MI) is a counseling method for eliciting a participant's motivation for change. Two well‐studied applications of MI are its use for increasing adherence to evidence‐based cancer screening guidelines (Kinney et al., 2014, 2018; Menon et al., 2011) and for communication of cancer risk status (de Geus et al., 2016). The success of MI in these settings raises the question of what other public health issues could be addressed using MI methods. This brief report describes the design of an investigation using MI strategies to increase cascade screening got familial hypercholesterolemia (FH) by eliciting participants' motivations to undergo cholesterol screening and communicate with at-risk family members about the risks associated with FH.