Reflections on cancer in the context of women's health: focus group discussions with Iranian immigrant women in Sweden.

In cancer prevention, culture and ethnicity have often been considered in negative terms as a variable to explain "misconceptions" and "knowledge deficits." This study, based on data from nine focus groups with Iranian immigrant women of various ages residing in Sweden, was instead conducted to explore reasoning on cancer prevention and screening within a framework of beliefs on health, illness and sickness for women in general. Complex relationships and reasoning about health maintenance and disease prevention were found to be related to perceptions of body and self, and to the continual construction of social roles throughout the life span. Spontaneous discussion of relationships between stress, maintaining health and developing disease arose in all groups. Negative outcomes associated with stress have consequences for information provision, as focusing on the negative is viewed as leading to negative outcomes. "Cultural" differences appear to be as related to social roles and phases in the life cycle, as to ethnicity.