BELIEFS AND MAMMOGRAPHY SCREENING

Introduction: Breast cancer is a leading form of preventable cancer am ong women in the United States. Despite improvements in mammography an d other early detection techniques, special populations, including old er and minority women, continue to experience high incidence and morta lity rates. Knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs are ubiquitous construct s in preventive medicine, health behavior and behavioral epidemiology. These constructs often are used to explain variation in health screen ing behavior. While all three have been examined in relation to mammog raphy screening, concentration on the single category of beliefs and t he relation between specific beliefs and mammography screening practic es has remained largely uninvestigated. Methods: Using logistic regres sion modeling, we examined the relationship between four individual be liefs and mammography screening in a cross-sectional study of 407 wome n. Results: After we controlled for confounding factors in a multivari able analysis, belief in the efficacy of early detection in improving breast cancer outcome (odds ratio [OR] = 2.98; 95% confidence interval s [CI] = 1.62, 5.47) and perceived risk (OR = 0.49; 95% CI = 0.26, 0.9 4) were significantly associated with screening practice. Belief that mammography is dangerous (OR = 0.46; 95% CI = 0.18, 1.18) or painful ( OR = 1.25; 95% CI = 0.75, 2.08) was not significantly associated with screening practice. Conclusions: Information on the relationship betwe en beliefs and screening practices may be used both to understand scre ening behaviors and to develop targeted strategies to improve mammogra phy compliance.