Impact of Per Capita Income on the Effectiveness of School-Based Health Education Programs to Promote Cervical Cancer Screening Uptake in Southern Mozambique

CONTEXT: In the face of rising mortality rates from cervical cancer (CC) among women of reproductive age, a nationwide screening program based on visual inspection with acetic acid was introduced in Mozambique in 2009. OBJECTIVE: The objective of the study is to examine the impact of per capita income on the effectiveness of school-based health education programs to promote the utilization of CC screening services. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We conducted a cross-sectional study in 2013 involving 105 women randomly selected from households of different economic backgrounds. Marginal effect estimates derived from a logit model were used to explore the patterns in the effectiveness of school-based health education to promote CC screening uptake according to household per capita income, based on purchasing power parity. RESULTS: We found a CC screening uptake of 16.1% (95% confidence interval [CI], 9.7%–24.6%) even though 64.6% (95% CI, 54.2%–74.1%) of women had heard of it. There are important economic differentials in the effectiveness of school-based health education to influence women's decision to receive CC screening. Among women with primary school or less, the probability of accessing CC screening services increases with increasing income (P < 0.05). However, income significantly reduces the effect that school-based health education has on the probability of screening uptake among those women with more than 7 years of educational attainment (P = 0.02). CONCLUSION: These results show that CC screening programs in resource-constrained settings need approaches tailored to different segments of women with respect to education and income to achieve equitable improvement in the levels of screening uptake.