Abstract
Since 1996, the Emilia-Romagna Region has been promoting
screening programmes for cervical cancer, selecting resident
women aged 25-64 as a target population. This analysis concerns
a second round of screening performed in the city of Ferrara
and its province. A total of 103,971 women were invited to be
screened, but only 55.51% of them arrived on the day of the
scheduled screening. We therefore decided to investigate the
reasons for this lack of participation using preliminary findings
from the local screening program registry. These indicated
that non-attendance was related to variables such as area of
residence and age, and significant differences were observed
between localities, with a consistently greater participation in
industrial neighbourhoods and their surroundings than in rural
areas. In order to elucidate these observations further, a crosssectional
survey, placing special emphasis on setting, area of
residence, age and level of education, was performed by structured
telephone questionnaire, in order to identify the reasons
behind non-attendance. Approximately 94% of the contacted
women agreed to be interviewed, thereby demonstrating that a
telephone interview is a valid means of collecting data in such
cases. It should be noted that, among the women unwilling to
respond to the questionnaire, a marked increase in percentage
was observed for those resident in rural areas, of whom approximately
50% fell into the under-40 age group. The results of the
survey indicated, as demonstrated by several previous studies,
that age and the area of residence are both determining factors
in the decision or not to participate in a screening programme. It
was also observed that women who had completed the lower and
upper secondary school education were shown to pay greater
attention to health matters than those who had not.
