Factors related to the knowledge, attitudes and practices of opportunistic cervical cancer screening in I.R of Iran

Organized cervical screening program has led to prevention of cervical cancer prevention worldwide. Women’s knowledge and attitudes is linked to their participation in cervical screening. We studied the knowledge, attitudes and practices (KAP) of women about cervical cancer prevention and the related factors in Tehran, I.R. of Iran. Trained interviewers used a validated questionnaire to study KAP in healthy women about cervical cancer prevention. We studied association between women’s knowledge and their attendance in cervical screening with different explanatory variables. We used logistic regression model for statistical analyses. We recruited 799 women in this study. The women’s knowledge about cervical cancer prevention was positively associated with age at first pregnancy (P- value for trend 0.003). Illiterate women had 93% lower knowledge about cervical cancer and screening compared to highly educated women (OR=0.07, CI: 0.01, 0.34). Women who were living in the northern part of the city (higher socio economic status (SES)) had about 2-fold higher knowledge (OR=0.42, 95% CI: 0.30, 0.64) and had a higher participation rate in screening (OR=0.40, 95% CI: 0.26, 0.64) than women in the southern (lower SES) part of the city. Woman with a higher knowledge had about 2-fold higher participation in the screening than those who had lower knowledge (OR=1.90, 95% CI: 1.30, 2.70). We found that higher women’s knowledge, living in the high SES area, and higher academic education were statistically associated with attendance to screening. Tailored health promotion program for public awareness may increase the attendance in cervical screening.