Implications of preventive health behaviour for cervical and breast cancer screening programmes: a review

The success of screening programmes for breast and cervical cancer partly depends on women's acceptance and take-up of the service. Uptake of preventive health care programmes appears to be related to people's underlying motivations and attitudes, not only towards the disease in question, but towards health and illness generally. The perceived costs to the individual of embarking on particular courses of action also have to be taken into consideration. These attitudes and motivations vary between social groups. Unless the reasons for non-participation in preventive health care and screening programmes is understood, programmes will be misdirected and inappropriately designed. However, the failure of any one theory to account for most of the variance in health behaviour between social groups emphasizes the importance of health education and provision of information about health and prevention on a personal basis. General practitioners and practice based nurses are in a good position to be able to elicit the fears, prejudices and priorities of patients in this area, and thus provide more effective health education and information about preventive and screening services.