Affiliations 

  • 1 The Daffodil Centre, The University of Sydney, a joint venture with Cancer Council NSW, Australia
  • 2 Wolfson Institute of Population Health, Queen Mary University of London, UK
  • 3 Melbourne School of Population and Global Health, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
  • 4 Children's Hospital Westmead Clinical School, University of Sydney, NSW, Australia
  • 5 School of Population Health, University of New South Wales, NSW, Australia
  • 6 Australian Centre for the Prevention of Cervical Cancer, Carlton South, Victoria, Australia
Prev Med Rep, 2024 Sep;45:102849.
PMID: 39220611 DOI: 10.1016/j.pmedr.2024.102849

Abstract

OBJECTIVE: The coronavirus pandemic impacted health-seeking behaviour and access to primary care in Australia. We investigated factors associated with intention-to-attend and attendance of cervical screening during the pandemic, mainly in Victoria, Australia.

METHODS: We used questionnaire and attendance data (Aug 2020-Nov 2022) from Compass-PLUS, a sub-study of the Compass randomized-controlled trial of Human Papillomavirus-based vs cytology-based screening. Data was restricted to the HPV-screening arm for comparability to the national program. We investigated associations overall and for younger (25-39 years) and older (≥40 years) cohorts, between intention-to-attend/attendance, and socio-demographics, anxiety-related scores, and agreement with beliefs about screening during the pandemic (e.g. importance of screening, increased workload, working from home, risk of infection).

RESULTS: Among 2,226 participants, positive intention to attend screening was more likely among those with a family history of cancer (p = 0.030) or living outside major cities (p = 0.024). Increased attendance was associated with increasing age (p 

* Title and MeSH Headings from MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine.