Elsevier

Preventive Medicine

Volume 52, Issue 6, 1 June 2011, Pages 452-455
Preventive Medicine

Comparative community outreach to increase cervical cancer screening in the Mississippi Delta

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2011.03.018Get rights and content

Abstract

Objective

The aim of the study was to increase participation in cervical cancer screening of under-screened women living in the Mississippi Delta, a U.S. population at high risk for cervical cancer.

Methods

We conducted a door-to-door feasibility study of women living in the Mississippi Delta to increase participation in cervical cancer screening in 2009–10. Women (n = 119) aged 26–65 years who had not been screened in last 3 years or more, were not pregnant, and had a cervix were offered a cost-free choice: clinic-based Pap testing or home self-collection with HPV DNA testing.

Results

Seventy-seven women (64.7%) chose self-collection with HPV testing, of which sixty-two (80.5%) returned their self-collected specimen. By comparison, 42 women (35.3%) chose Pap testing, of which 17 (40.5%) attended their clinic appointment. Thus there was an almost 4-fold greater participation of under-screened women in self-collection with HPV testing than in free Pap testing (78.4% vs. 21.5%).

Conclusions

We found that offering self-collection will increase participation in cervical cancer screening among under-screened populations living in the Mississippi Delta. Based on these preliminary results, we suggest that self-collection with HPV DNA testing might complement current Pap testing programs to reach under-screened populations of women, such as those living in the Mississippi Delta.

Introduction

More than half of all cervical cancer occurring in the U.S. is found in medically underserved populations (http://www.cdc.gov/cancer/cervical/). Cervical cancer occurs mainly in these populations as part of a complex of diseases linked to poverty and/or racial/ethnic disparities (Freeman & Wingrove, 2007). Although targeting the necessary cause of cervical cancer, human papillomavirus (HPV), by vaccination shows tremendous promise for prevention (The FUTURE II Study Group, 2007, Garland et al., 2007, Paavonen et al., 2009), HPV vaccination does not prevent 30% of the cervical cancer caused by the untargeted HPV types nor does it treat the pre-existing HPV infections and related precursor conditions in the population (The FUTURE II Study Group, 2007, Hildesheim et al., 2007). Given that only 1/4 of U.S. adolescent women have received all three doses of their immunization against HPV vaccination (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 2010), who will glean the greatest benefit from HPV vaccination, and current HPV vaccines provide only 70% protection against cervical cancer, it seems likely that cervical cancer screening will be needed for decades to come, especially in under-served populations.

African-American women are more likely to get cervical cancer and twice as likely to die from cervical cancer than their Caucasian counterparts (Freeman & Wingrove, 2007). The disparities in cervical cancer incidence and mortality (Fig. 1) are still greater in the Mississippi Delta region (Freeman & Wingrove, 2007) than in other African-American populations. In our previous work in the Mississippi Delta region (Scarinci et al., 2010), we found that door-to-door recruitment was a more effective means to engage and recruit under-screened women in participating in cervical cancer screening. In that study, we found that under-screened women were willing to come to the clinic to participate, take a kit home for self-collection of a cervicovaginal specimen (for HPV testing), and return it to the clinic (unpublished data). However, that study was clinic based and women were offered a financial incentive to participate.

In a follow-up feasibility study, we conducted a door-to-door recruitment without incentive to determine what type of free intervention under-screened women living in the Mississippi Delta might choose and, given that choice, complete: clinic-based, physician-collected cervical specimens for Pap testing vs. home-based, self-collected cervicovaginal specimen for HPV testing.

Section snippets

Methods

We conducted a door-to-door recruitment in 4 towns (Sunflower, Moorhead, Inverness, and Doddsville) in Sunflower County, a high-risk population living in rural northwest Mississippi (Fig. 1), to identify women aged 26–65 years who might be eligible for the study in 2009–10 (Fig. 2). Among the 543 women identified in this age group, 95.0% (n = 516) were available to participate. We then excluded 394 (76.4%) women for the following a priori reasons (not mutually exclusive): 345 (66.9%) had a Pap

Results

Of the 119 participants (Fig. 2), 77 (64.7%) chose self-collection with HPV testing and 42 (35.3%) women selected clinic-based Pap testing; three women who had originally chose to get Pap testing later chose self-collection while one woman chose to switch from self-collection to Pap testing. All but 2 participants (117 of 119, 98.3%) were African American. Women who chose Pap testing were significantly older than those chose self-collection with HPV testing (median ages: 49 years vs. 39 years,

Discussion

In this feasibility study, we showed that offering free cervical cancer screening through direct contact could increase participation of under-screened, primarily African-American women living in the high-risk region of the Mississippi Delta. Importantly, we found that when offered, self-collection (using a complex sampling device) was more acceptable and effective intervention than offering free Pap testing at the local clinic.

We also noted with interest that it was women in their 30s and

Conflict of interes statement

The authors have no conflict of interest to report.

Acknowledgments

This research was supported by the Intramural Research Program of the NIH, NCI and by the NCI Center for Reducing Cancer Health Disparities (CRCHD). The authors acknowledge former members of CRCHD, Dr. Harold Freeman and Ms. Jane Daye for their unwavering support of this effort.

References (19)

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