Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The purpose of this study was to discover the news frames used by popular women’s magazines to report cervical cancer information. This study also explored what, if any, differences exist in the frames used for cervical cancer communication among magazines written for women of different races and ethnicities. Using the cultural theory approach as the underlying epistemology, a qualitative content analysis was used to learn how magazines read by African American, Hispanic, and white women provide a lens through which readers can understand cervical cancer. This study found five major frames used in women’s popular magazines to report cervical cancer information: consciousness-raising, confusion in abnormality, controversy, innovation/medicalization, and differences across identities. The findings extended media framing theory as well as a developing theory of women’s health communication into understanding better the gaps between women’s understanding of cervical cancer and the ways the media position and write about cervical cancer in news stories. Practical implications include identifying news reporting gaps that can be filled by cervical cancer and sexual health communicators through increased collaboration with popular magazine journalists in the forming, contextualizing, sourcing, and detailing of their stories.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: Screening for cervical cancer is an important aspect of public health. In the UK, the NHS Cervical Screening Programme (NHSCSP) ensures that cervical smear tests are available to all women between the ages of 20-64 years through primary care physicians, or nurses employed to assist them. A blanket approach to screening is adopted with all women receiving an invitation letter and information leaflet when their next smear test is due. This inevitably means that the official medical discourse on screening that women encounter is necessarily general and uniform in nature as it is designed to address a large number of women.

This paper explores how individual women interpret, negotiate and transform this general discourse through a consideration of their own individual circumstances, experiences and characteristics. It examines how women find their own position within this very general discourse. Drawing on qualitative interview data, the paper suggests that, far from passively accepting the general medical discourse, individual women engage in an individualising or personalising process through which cervical screening is made sense of within very specific personal and social contexts. The example used here therefore has relevance to debates around how discourses, both medical and non-medical, are internalised, transformed or even resisted.

Publication Type: Poster
Abstract: Depressive symptoms are elevated among women recalled for cancer screening (Ekeberg et al., 2001) and among those diagnosed with cancer (Burgess et al., 2005), but the effect of depressive symptoms on likelihood of screening for breast and cervical cancers is unclear (Dooren et al., 2003; Pirraglia et al., 2004). This research tests the hypothesis that depressive symptoms are associated with a lower likelihood of follow-up among low-income uninsured women enrolled in state public health program and explores relationships between depressive symptoms and program satisfaction, barriers to screening, and likelihood of cancer diagnosis. Methods: A random sample of 207 low-income women participating in the CDC-funded Massachusetts Department of Public Health’s breast and cervical screening program was surveyed by phone. Depressive symptoms were measured with a two-question screening index tested by Haggman et al. (2004) with physical therapy patients. Results: 38% of the sample was identified as having at least one depressive symptom; 19% as having two. Depressive symptoms were associated with less frequent help from case managers, less satisfaction with case management, and reports of more problems in receiving services. Depressive symptoms were also associated with poorer ratings of physical health, but not with a greater likelihood of receiving a cancer diagnosis. Conclusions: Depressive symptoms are associated with greater anxiety about health service utilization and less satisfying interactions with service staff. Medical and allied staff should be sensitive to the prevalence of depressive symptoms in low-income women being screened for breast and cervical cancer and seek to overcome associated barriers.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Previous scholarship suggests that women with disabilities are a medically underserved population in the area of reproductive health care. This paper uses a nationally representative data set, the 1999 and 2000 National Health Interview Surveys, to examine whether women with disabilities are less likely to access one of the most basic reproductive health screening tools: the Pap smear. Findings suggest that, net of sociodemographic characteristics and health insurance coverage, women with disabilities are 10% less likely to have received a Pap smear than able-bodied women. Further analysis shows that women with disabilities are15% less likely to have visited an OB/GYN in the past year and, more strikingly, that when women with disabilities visit an OB/GYN, they are 20% less likely to receive a Pap smear than women without disabilities who visit an OB/GYN. Future research should provide more in-depth exploration of the reasons why women with disabilities are less likely to receive Pap smears in general, less likely to visit an OB/GYN, and why women with disabilities are less likely to receive a Pap smear when they visit an OB/GYN.

Publication Type: Abstract
Abstract: Background: Several studies have estimated annual U.S. healthcare costs associated with cervical cancer, however few data are available on the corresponding annual loss in women’s productive earnings resulting from premature mortality due to cervical cancer. The present study estimates annual productivity costs associated with cervical cancer mortality in the U.S.

Methods: An analytic framework was developed for estimating the lost earnings that would have accrued during the year 2000, for women dying from cervical cancer during that and earlier years, who would have otherwise been alive and working in 2000. The following data from publicly available sources were gathered and analyzed for U.S. women on an age-specific basis: (1) Annual number of cervical cancer deaths during 2000 and preceding years; (2) Estimated probability of otherwise being alive during the year 2000, for women dying from cervical cancer during the period 1935-2000; (3) Labor force participation rates in 2000; (4) Mean annual earnings in 2000.

Results: Overall, it was estimated that there were 130,377 women who would have been alive during 2000, had they not died from cervical cancer during that or a previous year. Over 75% of these women died before age 60, with more than 25% dying prior to age 40, and it was estimated that 37,594 (29%) of these women would have had labor force earnings during 2000. The total productivity loss in 2000 due to cervical cancer mortality was estimated at $1.3 billion.

Conclusions: The annual productivity loss for cervical cancer estimated in the present analysis is several times higher than recent estimates of the annual U.S. direct medical costs associated with cervical cancer ($300-400 million).