Barriers to Cervical Cancer Screening Among Haitian Immigrant Women in Little Haiti, Miami

Abstract

Previous research has not examined barriers to Pap test screening among Haitian immigrant women through their own discourse. Community Health Workers conducted in-depth interviews with Haitian women in Little Haiti, Miami. We used a grounded theory approach to analyze data from the in-depth interviews. Emergent themes coalesced into three core categories of screening barriers: structural, psychosocial, and sociocultural. We developed a model of screening barriers to depict the themes within each core category. Screening barriers must be examined and understood from the social contexts in which they are produced in order to create meaningful interventions.

Burden of Human Papillomavirus among Haitian Immigrants in Miami, Florida: Community-Based Participatory Research in Action

“…The current study was conducted as part of an ongoing CBPR initiative in Little Haiti, which has been described in previous publications [2, 3, 9]. Briefly, CBPR is a research methodology, increasingly popular in the field of public health, which invites community participation throughout the research process, from study conceptualization to dissemination of findings [10–12].…”

A randomized trial of mailed HPV self-sampling for cervical cancer screening among ethnic minority women in South Florida

“…For example, the rate of cervical cancer in Little Haiti, a large enclave of Haitian settlement, is 38 per 100,000, which is over four times that of the state of Florida overall (8/100,000) [7, 8]. Previously identified barriers to cervical cancer screening among Haitian and other ethnic minority women living in Miami include: language barriers; lack of access to the formal healthcare system; preference for ethnomedical providers; limited knowledge about cancer and the importance of early detection of disease; and, cultural concerns regarding modesty/limited acceptability of traditional Pap smear screening [6, 9]. …”

Knowledge about cervical cancer prevention and psychosocial barriers to screening among Mexican women

“…Psychosocial barriers include fear and embarrassment associated with the physical aspects of undergoing a Pap test, and fear of knowing a cancer diagnosis. Socio-cultural barriers refer to culturally-mediated beliefs that define illnesses as symptomatic or that associate inadequate feminine hygiene to cervical cancer [14]. The main psychosocial barriers that keep women from participating in cervical cancer screening include: anxiety over pain, anxiety over infertility or infection, anxiety over test results, fear of the test, embarrassment, and a woman's partner's lack of support for the procedure [14][15][16][17][18][19].…”