In Florida, a Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funded initiative has targeted socio-economically disadvantaged women for breast and cervical cancer screening. Since 1995, women aged 50-64 (or 40-50 if symptomatic) with incomes 200% below the federally-defined poverty limit without health insurance and living in various metropolitan areas in Florida have been eligible to participate. To date, the Florida Comprehensive Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program (BCCEDP) has screened over 11,000 women, detecting over 120 previously undiagnosed breast cancers.
This study was a matched case control study of women with breast cancer to evaluate the hypothesis that breast cancer cases in the BCCEDP were more likely to be diagnosed at an earlier stage than those not screened in the BCCEDP. After performing a linkage with the Florida Cancer Data System (FCDS), Florida's population based incident cancer registry, all confirmed cases of breast cancer were matched with two age, gender, race/ethnic controls recently diagnosed with breast cancer from the FCDS database. One group of controls was from the same census tract as the case, and the other was selected from a similar socio-economic census tract without access to the BCCEDP Program. The stage at diagnosis was compared using odds ratios between the cases and controls; additional variables were examined. Thus, this analysis evaluated the efficacy of an early detection program for breast cancer in socio-economically disadvantaged women in terms of increasing early stage at diagnosis.
Learning Objectives: 1. Define the issues for breast cancer screening in socio-economically disadvantaged populations. 2. Evaluate a Early Detection Program for Breast Cancer in women at 200% below the poverty level in Florida using a Case Control Study
Keywords: Cancer Screening, Evaluation
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.