Abstract
This study examines the effects of a large‐scale cervical cancer prevention campaign in Recife, Brazil between 1994 and 1995. It suggests that while this program effectively motivated women to get pap smears, it reinforced local understandings of the pap smear that ultimately had unintended negative consequences for women's health. It argues that because the campaign connected female sexual activity directly with cervical cancer, the program's message was interpreted by many women to mean that cervical cancer was a sexually transmitted disease and that it would behave like one. Women who were no longer sexually active believed that they did not need to be screened. In addition, women who were sexually active believed that they could use pap smears to diagnose and cure sexually transmitted diseases.
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