Potential mHealth Tool for Promoting Cervical Screening: the Views of Refugee and Non-Refugee African-Born Women Living in Brisbane, Australia

Abstract

In recent years, mHealth innovations have emerged as an important tool for health promotion. It offers an effective means of bringing healthcare services to people and its impact has been demonstrated in both affluent and low-income countries. This study aims to report and comment on the views of refugee and non-refugee immigrant women from Africa living in Brisbane on using mobile text messaging as a potential tool for promoting cervical screening. This is a descriptive study employing a mixed-method design. A survey was conducted first among 254 African-born women conveniently sampled from the Brisbane local government area, followed by semi-structured interviews with a subsample of 19 respondents. About three out of every four women (78.7%) shared the view that mobile text messages can be used to promote cervical screening and four out of every five wanted to receive such information via mobile phone messages (80.7%). The findings suggest that mobile text messaging was widely used by the participants and would be more effective if used as a complementary follow-up program after other information sessions. Mobile text messaging may be the appropriate tool for the proposed renewal of the National Cervical Screening Program in Australia where invitations will be sent out to women before their rescreen due date.