How Peer Influence Can Revolutionize Cervical Cancer Screening

Cervical cancer is a leading health threat for women worldwide, ranking fourth in prevalence, with 660,000 new diagnoses and 350,000 fatalities recorded in 2022, according to the World Health Organization. Access to early screening and timely medical care can dramatically improve survival prospects. Yet, in many low- and middle-income nations, large numbers of women are missing routine screenings, resulting in higher rates of death from the disease.

Building Trust, Boosting Screenings: The Role of Peer-Led Health Communications

Recent findings from Texas McCombs reveal that trust plays a crucial role in encouraging women to get screened. Doctoral researcher Anima Nivsarkar discovered that health communications delivered by reliable and respected figures—such as physicians or community peers—significantly increase the likelihood that women will pursue these potentially life-saving examinations.

The study began when a primary health care provider in India asked Nivsarkar — with Vedha Ponnappan and Prakash Satyavageeswaran from the Indian Institute of Management Udaipur and Sundar Bharadwaj from the University of Georgia — for help encouraging women to get cervical cancer screenings.

In discussions with local nonprofits, they found powerful social barriers — taboos and misconceptions around reproductive health — even when women knew that screening was available.

“It’s one of the cancers that is preventable, so then, what is it that is holding back women from actually getting the screening?” says Nivsarkar.

“These interviews helped us uncover that it was primarily the social stigma, the sociocultural norms that existed in these areas, that were holding back women from getting screened and taking charge of their health.”

Doctors and hospitals typically rely on print materials, such as infographics, to educate the public. Nivsarkar’s team explored a more personalized form of messaging: videos recorded by physicians and peers. They found that both types of message carriers helped raise screenings more than printed information alone.

Effects were strongest, the researchers found, when a communicator’s message matched their role.

Incentivizing Health: How Trust and Authority Can Fund More Screenings

When authority figures such as doctors or relatable sources such as peers explained the risks of not getting screened, women were willing to pay more for screening: enough that clinics could afford to screen 21% more women.

Although the research focused on a specific audience and issue, it may have applications in other health care contexts involving cultural barriers, Nivsarkar says. Similar approaches might work for other kinds of stigmatized reproductive health services or in communities where mental health screening encounters taboos.

The results challenge the strategy of depending on infographics or the mere provision of factual information, Nivsarkar says. “Given that peer-empowering messages led to the largest increase in adoption, we recommend public health campaigns shift toward leveraging peer influence with culturally attuned appeals.”

Source-Eurekalert