Cancer Screening Attendance among Czech Women

Anna Altová , Charles University, Faculty of Science
Michala Lustigová, Charles University, Faculty of Science; National Institute of Public Health, Prague

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Czechia and breast cancer is the most frequently diagnosed cancer among Czech women, with about 1,700 deaths in 2016. Even though cervical cancer is less common there are still hundreds of cases being diagnosed each year. The country has introduced population-based cancer screening for breast cancer in 2002 and cervical cancer in 2008, which is available free of charge to all women of eligible age. In the study presented we used health insurance data to calculate attendance rates among Czech women in years 2009 to 2017. For identifying groups of women who do and do not attend cancer screening, we used the data from EHIS 2014. We applied binary logistic regression to calculate chances to attend screening according to different characteristics of women as age, education, marital status or household income. Although the screening programmes have been running for 17 and 12 years respectively, the screening attendance is still quite low with about half of women attending in 2017. Younger women tend to attend screening more than older women, as well as more educated women. There are also differences in attendance between women from different regions. To increase the level of attendance it is necessary to acquire the knowledge about the characteristics of non-attenders and the barriers that are causing the non-attendance, to develop a series of recommendations for approaching those women.

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 Presented in Session P2. Poster Session Ageing, Health and Mortality