Breast cancer screening barriers and mammography completion in older minority women.

UNLABELLED: OBJECTIVES The study tested a behavioral and structural barriers model of breast cancer screening, while seeking to determine age effects of behavioral barriers, in order to identify the factors that inhibit screening among older, minority women.
METHODS: 405 older African-American women eligible for a federally funded cancer screening program were enrolled in the study. Participants were administered an intake questionnaire and followed for 3 months to determine mammography use.
RESULTS: Three months after enrollment in the program, 79% had not received breast cancer screening. The oldest cohort had significantly lower rates of mammography (just 16% of screened women were > or = 60, p<0.05). Behavioral barriers (knowledge/information deficits, cancer risk perception, cancer fears) inhibited mammography in the oldest group; their breast cancer information deficits included less knowledge of breast cancer risk, treatment, and survivability (all p<0.001).
CONCLUSIONS: Older women, with greater breast cancer risk than younger cohorts, should be targeted as a high need population for cancer screening. Even when financial and insurance barriers are removed mammography rates are 1/3 those of women <50. Since failure to be screened is related to knowledge and information barriers, health care providers have the potential to educate their older patients and subsequently increase the likelihood they will have regular cancer screening.