When considering some of the barriers to Screening I think that we will find that there is a deep, foundational need for the Education sector to play its part.
We shouldn’t expect too much (my eldest son is a teacher and he won’t thank me for adding to his workload) but a basic level of taught health literacy that ensures young people understand the purpose of Screening, and its part in the Prevention/ Detection/ Diagnosis/ Treatment/ Palliative Care continuum, would be a great help.
If Education is meant to prepare a child for an adult life that includes NCDs such as cervical cancer, then shouldn’t health literacy be somewhere in the mix?
Kind regards,
Mark
HIFA profile: Mark Lodge is the Commissioning Editor for the annual Cancer Control [ https://www.cancercontrol.info/ ] and the immediate past Chair of the UK and Ireland Global Cancer Network (https://www.ukgcn.org/). He serves on the Lancet Oncology Commission on Cancer in the Commonwealth and is a member of the UK Working Group on NCDs. Previously he was the UK Director of the International Network for Cancer Treatment and Research. He lives in Oxford, UK. He is a member of the HIFA working group on cervical cancer. https://www.hifa.org/support/members/mark mlodge AT canet.org