Examining Cervical Cancer Control for Refugee Women Living in the United States

Despite advances in cervical cancer prevention, foreign-born women living in the United States are more than twice as likely to have never been screened for cervical cancer compared to U.S.-born women (18.5% vs. 6.8%, respectively). Refugees are a specific type of foreign-born group in the United States; an estimated 1.6 million female refugees have resettled in the United States since 1975; however, little research has examined factors that may predict cervical cancer screening adherence specifically for refugee populations living in the United States. This formative research was completed in Charlottesville, Virginia, at the International Family Medicine Clinic, which has an 18-year history of providing interprofessional, culturally sensitive access to preventative care for refugees resettling in the community. Our multidisciplinary team used a mixed-methods data analysis approach using a social ecological framework to achieve three aims: 1) determine the proportion of women who are up-to-date on cervical cancer screening; 2) examine predictors of cervical cancer screening adherence in the sample; 3) describe cervical cancer control policies and practices for countries of origin of women who resettle in the United States as refugees. The results of this study are expected to inform future research that will test and refine interventions to increase rates of cervical cancer screening for refugee women living in the United States.

CHAPTER 3: Predictors of cervical cancer screening for refugee women attending an international family medicine clinic in the United States. After peer review, the Version of Record was published in the journal Cancer Causes and Control in 2022 by Springer Nature and can be found here: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10552-022-01612-8.

CHAPTER 4: Health inequity in cervical cancer control among refugee women in the United States by country of origin. A prior version of this chapter is formally published in Health Equity at https://doi.org/10.1089/heq.2020.0108 ©Creative Commons CC-BY 4.0
This original submission version of the article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishers’ self-archiving terms and conditions.

CHAPTER 5: Self-collection of samples for HPV testing to increase participation in cervical cancer screening by immigrant women: An integrative review. This is the accepted version of the following article: Elmore CE, Laughon K, Mitchell EM. Self-collection of samples for HPV testing to increase participation in cervical cancer screening by immigrant women: An integrative review. Public Health Nursing. 2020;37(5):677-695, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1111/phn.12782. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with the Wiley Self-Archiving Policy [http://www.wileyauthors.com/self-archiving].