Community-Based Cervical Cancer Prevention and Education Among Women Living With HIV

Community-Based Cervical Cancer Prevention and Education Among Women Living With HIV

The long-term goal is to build a sustainable, community-based outreach program to promote cervical cancer screening among women living with HIV (WLH), thereby reducing related morbidity and mortality. The strategy for achieving this goal is to develop an intervention incorporating health literacy approaches and principles of community-based participatory research. Health literacy is a relatively new concept that has been applied mainly toward identifying high-risk individuals rather than toward changing health behaviors and outcomes. The proposed intervention is the first to integrate health literacy into educating WLH to promote cervical cancer screening. Community Health Workers (CHW) support has also rarely been incorporated into cancer screening interventions targeting WLH, making the proposed intervention a uniquely comprehensive approach. Building on recent successful testing by the investigators of a health literacy-focused intervention to promote cervical cancer screening in recent immigrant women, the investigators will test whether health literacy-focused interventions delivered by trained CHWs will be effective in promoting health literacy and increasing Pap test rates in a new population, WLH. The investigators hypothesize that, compared to WLH in the control group, WLH who receive the health literacy-focused CHW intervention will demonstrate: (1) higher rates of Pap test, (2) greater levels of health literacy, (3) higher levels of cervical cancer knowledge, and (4) higher self-efficacy.

Inclusion Criteria:

• HIV infection Able to read and write English 12+ months since Pap test Willing to provide written consent to allow the team to audit medical records for Pap test use

Exclusion Criteria:

• Had undergone a hysterectomy Pregnant