“I Have Never Heard That One”: Young Girls' Knowledge and Perception of Cervical Cancer

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Abstract
With the advent of a vaccine for the human papillomavirus (HPV), many are claiming that cervical cancer may become a health worry of the past. While the vaccine certainly represents an important step forward in the fight against HPV and cervical cancer, it does not diminish the importance of health education or screening interventions particularly amongst adolescents. This study explores the existing state of cancer and cervical cancer knowledge of Latina and African American adolescent girls from low-income, urban neighborhoods. We found that the study participants expressed a range of attitudes toward cancer. Knowledge of cancer also was varied and somewhat anecdotal, showing no unified body of knowledge, but instead representing an assemblage of information culled from formal and informal sources. Participants were most familiar with breast and lung cancer and mentioned these types of cancer most frequently in the focus groups. Most participants had never heard of cervical cancer, while a few were familiar with several aspects of the disease. Cancer knowledge seemed to be gleaned mostly from personal stories, perhaps suggesting the pervasiveness of cancer incidence in their community. The predominant attitudes expressed toward cancer included fear, uncertainty, and anxiety. Our findings suggest that considerable continued health promotion efforts are needed to improve knowledge about cancer in general, and particularly about cervical cancer, to reduce fear and to highlight the effectiveness of prevention and screening.