BARRIERS TO UPTAKE OF BREAST CANCER SCREENING IN KENYA

To conduct clinical breast cancer screening in three sites in Western Kenya and explore community barriers to screening uptake.

Cross-sectional study.

Western Kenya specifically, Mosoriot, Turbo, and Kapsokwony.

Community members (18 years and older) who did not attend the screening events.

The outcome measure was having heard about the breast cancer screening events. Both structured and open-ended questions were used for data collection. Item frequency, correlations, and content analyses were performed.

A total of 733 community members were surveyed (63% women, median age 33 years, IQR = 26-43). More than half (55%) of respondents had heard about the screening but did not attend. The majority of those who had heard about this particular screening had knowledge of screening availability in general (45% vs. 25%, p < 0.001). Only 8.0% of those who heard and 6.0% of those who had not heard of the screening event had previously undergone clinical breast exam (p = 0.20). Reasons for not attending the screening event were personal factors, including busy schedule (41.0%), perceived low personal risk (12.7%), lack of transport (4.2%), as well as health facility factors such as poor publicity (14.4%) and long queues (8.7%).

Barriers to breast cancer screening uptake were associated with inadequate publicity, perceived long waits at event and busy lives among community women.