Improving awareness of cervical cancer screening program among Iraqi women attending primary health care centers: An intervention educational program

Abstract

Background: Cervical cancer is a serious health problem in women during their reproductive years, the number and percentage of the women diagnosed or died from cervical cancer is increasing so there is a dramatic need to increase awareness about its signs and symptoms, screening and prevention. Objectives: To assess the awareness of sample of Iraqi women about early detection and screening of cervical cancer; and to determine the effectiveness of educational program of this knowledge. Methodology At four primary health care facilities in Baghdad, a quasi-experimental research was done with a sample size of 90 females who were selected using a simple selection procedure. The study had two groups: 60 women in the control group and 30 women in the intervention group. With minor modifications, a questionnaire was used to gather data over a period of seven months. To examine the associations between the variables, the t-test, chi-square test, and fisher exact test were employed, with a P value of 0.05 or less being deemed statistically significant. Results: More than one third of the studied sample aged between (20-29), The highest level of education was primary, intermediate school for control, intervention group respectively (35%,33.3%), (66.6%) of the studied sample were house wives and (25.5%) were governmental sector employed; (75.5%) of the women were married, while (93.3%) of them had negative Family history of cervical cancer. (35.55%) of the studied sample had Intermediate socioeconomic status, there was no significant association between knowledge score of the participants and their Sociodemographic variables Conclusions: Health education program significantly increases the knowledge of women about cervical cancer screening.