OBJECTIVE:To determine if women would have higher breast and cervical cancer screening rates if lay health advisers recommended screening and offered a convenient screening opportunity.
DESIGN: Controlled trial.
SETTING: Urban county teaching hospital.PARTICIPANTS: Women aged 40 years and over attending appointments in several non-primary-care outpatient clinics.
INTERVENTIONS:Lay health advisers assessed the participants' breast and cervical cancer screening status and offered women in the intervention group who were due for screening an appointment with a female nurse practitioner.
MEASUREMENTS AND MAIN RESULTS:Screening rates at baseline and at follow-up 1 year after the intervention were determined. At follow-up, the mammography rate was 69% in the intervention group versus 63% in the usual care group ( p ؍ .009), and the Pap smear rate was 70% in the intervention group versus 63% in the usual care group ( p ؍ .02). In women who were due for screening at baseline, the mammography rate was 60% in the intervention group versus 50% in the usual care group ( p ؍ .006), and the Pap smear rate was 63% in the intervention group versus 50% in the usual care group ( p ؍ .002). The intervention was effective across age and insurance payer strata, and was particularly effective in Native American women.
CONCLUSIONS:Breast and cervical cancer screening rates were improved in women attending non-primary-care outpatient clinics by using lay health advisers and a nurse practitioner to perform screening. The effect was strongest in women in greatest need of screening.KEY WORDS: mass screening; vaginal smears; mammography; nurse practitioners; community health aides. J GEN INTERN MED 1998;13:515-521.S creening mammography and Pap smears have been shown convincingly to decrease breast and cervical cancer mortality. 1,2 Recent population-based surveys suggest progress toward the year 2000 goals in the general population for both breast and cervical cancer screening. 3,4 However, nonwhite women, older women, and those with lower incomes and less education generally have lower screening rates. [4][5][6] Strategies to improve screening rates in these groups are needed.Hennepin County Medical Center, the urban county teaching hospital in Minneapolis, serves many women from groups that are less likely to receive breast and cervical cancer screening. Preliminary reviews of the charts of women attending appointments in the general medicine clinic, medical subspecialty clinics, and surgical clinics, showed the lowest screening rates in women attending surgical clinics (K.L. Margolis, unpublished data). Primary care physicians have been urged to "put prevention into practice" with each patient contact, 7 but few specialists are prepared to utilize each patient contact this way. Physicianoriented interventions such as education, 8 feedback of screening rates, 9 checklists, 10,11 nurse-generated reminders, 12 and computer-generated reminders 9,13 have been modestly successful in increasing cancer screening in primary care setting...