Local women experiencing health inequalities endorse self-testing kits for cervical screening
It was a fantastic discussion – thank you so much for organising it.
By detecting potentially harmful infections before they can cause cancer, cervical screening helps doctors prevent the disease from developing and saves thousands of lives in England each year. Screening can also spot some early-stage cervical cancers, which are much easier to treat successfully when caught in time.
Despite this, fewer than 7 in 10 people eligible for cervical screening in England currently take part, and uptake has been falling over the past decade. Barriers to screening are bigger for communities experiencing health inequalities. We've already done a lot of work with our partners, exploring those barriers.
Tackling health inequalities
At Healthwatch, we harness the strength of the voluntary and community sector to help improve health and care services. One way we can do this is by bringing NHS organisations and community organisations together to learn from each other.
NHS England needed to test their pilot programme with communities that were underrepresented in existing cervical screening programmes. We brought them together with Jannaty, an organisation based on Seven Sisters Road working to empower women and girls from disadvantaged minority ethnic backgrounds.
What is cervical self-screening?
- Cervical screening is a preventative test to detect human papillomavirus (HPV), a common virus that can cause abnormal cell changes leading to cervical cancer. It’s also known as a smear test.
- Cervical self-screening offers people who don’t usually attend screening appointments the chance to complete the test themselves, without needing a healthcare professional to collect the sample.
Hearing the views of the women at Jannaty
They gave the NHS their views on what the programme should be called, on the clarity of the instructions currently accompanying the self-screening kit, on how the kit was accessed and, more broadly, on how to promote screening more effectively to communities with low participation rates. The group felt positive about the test, and everyone preferred the idea of self-screening.
One participant admitted that though she told people she attended screening appointments, this wasn’t the truth. She was a survivor of female genital mutilation (FGM). She had only ever had one smear test and it had been such an awful and painful experience, she decided she would never attend a screening appointment again with a nurse. However, now that self-sampling was going to be available she said she would definitely do it.
