Comparing breast, cervical and bowel cancer screening participation
Research type
Research Study
Full title
What can we learn about how to improve uptake of bowel cancer screening from higher rates of uptake in breast and cervical screening programmes?
IRAS ID
153194
Contact name
Katie Robb
Contact email
Research summary
Screening can reduce deaths from cervical, bowel and breast cancer if the people invited participate. Population-based surveys in both the UK and US indicate that public support for screening is around 90%, yet participation lags well below this. In Scotland, uptake among women is 74% for breast, 71% for cervical but only 58% for bowel, suggesting that apparent enthusiasm for screening is not being translated into participation.
Little research has examined why bowel screening fails to achieve the uptake rates of breast and cervical: we propose that understanding why women who are eligible for all three types of screening choose to do none, some or all tests may shed new light on barriers unique to bowel screening.
Our aim is to inform interventions to improve bowel screening uptake by comparing
facilitators and barriers across the breast, cervical and bowel screening programmes.
The research will investigate why women choose to participate in none, some or all screening programmes and examine barriers common to all types of screening and unique barriers to bowel screening. We will undertake interviews with a purposive sample of between 36-60 women aged 50-60. Potential interviewees will be identified from a Greater Glasgow and Clyde Health Board dataset of women eligible for all three programmes.REC name
North West - Liverpool Central Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
14/NW/1300
Date of REC Opinion
9 Sep 2014
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion