Screening for breast cancer: candidacy and compliance
Section snippets
Data collection and analysis
The research was supported by the Multi-Ethnic Women's Advocacy Project attached to City and Hackney Community Health Council (CHC) until 1998. CHCs were set up in 1974 and disbanded in 2003. They were the channel through which the ‘patients’ voice’ was broadcast to the local NHS services. CHCs had considerable leeway to decide how best to serve their local community. The high fertility of the relatively young migrant communities led to the setting up of the Advocacy Project which was mostly
Candidacy
A consensus about what causes breast cancer failed to emerge in any of the groups. Indeed, in some, the question was hotly contested with women corroborating their own ideas or refuting those of others by drawing on their own experiences.
T1A ‘No, it [breast cancer] has nothing to with age.’
T1 B ‘No. I know a very young woman who had it. It has nothing to do with age. She never smoked or drank alcohol. I have heard here that her breast has been removed in Turkey.’
T1 C ‘It could be related to
Discussion
The findings reported here demonstrate the value of including white respondents in social research which operationalises ethnicity. Their presence has minimized the risk of jumping to unwarranted, simplistic conclusions about the beliefs and behaviours of black and minority ethnic women; it has also allowed general themes to emerge which suggest new approaches to thinking about all women's understanding of their risk of breast cancer and the reasons why they comply with or refuse their
Acknowledgements
The research was funded by the NHS Executive North Thames Research and Development Directorate. Thanks are due to the women who participated in the focus groups. The advocates of the Multi-Ethnic Women's Health Project, Janet Richardson, Robert Carpenter, Sylvia Denton, Christine Roberts, Clare Moynihan, Nina Hallowell, and the anonymous reviewers for their very helpful comments.
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