What's Pants, But Could Save Your Life?: Increasing Cervical Cancer Screening Utilization in England

Abstract

The UK's Cervical Screening Programme began in 1988 and entitles all women aged 25 to 64 to free cervical screening. This has contributed significantly to national reductions in the incidence of invasive cervical cancer.

However, there has been a decline in screening utilization among women aged 25 to 39 years, with numbers falling steadily since 2001. In the West Midlands, only 76% of eligible women have had a cervical screening test within the last five year.

To address this, the West Midlands Cervical Screening Quality Assurance Reference Centre proposed that a three year regional cervical screening intervention should be run across the entire West Midlands region, commencing in April 2008.

The result was 'What's pants, but could save your life?' - a social marketing program which raises awareness about the need for cervical screening with the target age group, and provides increased access to and provision of screening services to facilitate uptake. Work has also been done to enhance the service itself, for example, by always offering female screening nurses.

With a budget of £55,000 for 2008 ($77,000 US), the program has achieved an unprecedented increase in cervical screening utilization in the West Midlands region, seeing a 16% screening increase in the gateway age group after Quarter One alone. This puts the program on track to achieve its year one target of 4% increase across all age groups in the region.