For women, with women: increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of the cervical cancer screening programme with a participatory technology approach to develop lab-on-a-chip screening in urine. NWO-KWF.

Cervical cancer is the most common gynaecological cancer affecting 640,000 women worldwide and 900-1,000 women in the Netherlands annually, placing a significant burden on society and healthcare. Cervical cancer could be prevented by screening programmes. In the Netherlands, screening implementation is suboptimal, leading to an unnecessary high incidence of cervical cancer. This suboptimal implementation is attributable to low screening participation
(participation rate: 50-60%). With significant lower participation rates of 30-40%, Turkish/Moroccan and Caribbean/Surinamese women are overrepresented in the group of non-participants.
This project aims to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of current screening approaches by
lowering participation barriers using innovative technologies, thereby reducing inequalities.

The main goal of this subproject is to collaboratively develop and evaluate a new screening tool for cervical cancer, this may be in the form of a urine-based self-sampling test or modification of existing tests (cervical scrapes and cervicovaginal self-tests). We first identify existing barriers and facilitators regarding cervical cancer screening using Conversation Analysis. Women from Surinamese-, Caribbean-, Moroccan- and Turkish-Dutch communities.are recruited via community centres, mosques, churches, social media, and civil support foundations.
We ensure that sociocultural objections to the framework and design of screening can be sustainably addressed and integrated, for example, resistance to screening because of associations with not being a good wife or mother, or frictions between a religious, fate-accepting identity and a more scientific attitude.