“I Feel Healthy, I Don’t Need to Go”: Relationship between Self-Perceived Health and Screening Attendance

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

Cancer screening is an essential tool for reducing cancer mortality. However, screening hesitancy is still a quite common issue in many countries. In this study, we focus on one of the most commonly declared reasons for breast and cervical screening non-attendance among Czech women, which is ‘feeling healthy’. We use data from the European Health Interview Survey (EHIS) 2019 to analyse the relationship between the level of self-perceived health and breast and cervical screening attendance. There were 4,464 women in the sample (where all were eligible for cervical screening and 3,124 for breast screening), out of whom 27.7% did not attend cervical screening and 34.6% did not attend breast screening. The result of binary logistic regression showed that women with ‘good’ and ‘fair’ self-perceived health compared to those with ‘very good’ health had higher chances of attending both cervical (OR = 1.67, 95% CI 1.32–2.13 and OR = 1.34, 95% CI 1.03–1.74) and breast screening (OR = 2.14, 95% CI 1.76–2.61 and OR = 1.44, 95% CI 1.14–1.82; all models controlled for age and education). ‘Feeling healthy’ can lead women to believe that they do not need to attend cancer screening. Measures should be taken to improve health literacy and awareness of cancer to dispel misconceptions about cancer symptoms and encourage women to prioritise screening.

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 Presented in Session 49. Social Inequalities in Sexual and Reproductive Health