Abstract
BACKGROUND Women with disabilities are an unrecognized cancer disparities population who experience well-documented barriers to breast cancer screening. There is a critical need for targeted, community-directed programing to address these disparities. OBJECTIVES To describe the trajectory of a long-term community-academic partnership aimed at understanding and addressing breast cancer screening disparities among women with disabilities. METHODS Phase 1 was a thematic qualitative focus group study (n = 40) with women with physical disabilities to understand their breast cancer screening experiences. Phase 2 was the application of an equity-focused knowledge translation (KT) process that brought together breast cancer survivors with disabilities and graduate applied health students in KT collaboratives to create innovative, evidence-informed knowledge products. Phase 3 included the development of community-based programming. RESULTS In phase 1, women with disabilities identified provider and patient barriers to breast cancer screening, including a lack of provider knowledge and respect for individuals with disabilities, lack of accessibility, the history of stigma and mistreatment within the health care setting, and treatment fatigue. In phase 2, KT collaboratives created the short film "ScreenABLE" to educate providers and community members about physical and attitudinal barriers to cancer screening. In phase 3, community, academic, and clinical partners collaborated to create ScreenABLE Saturday, a wellness fair and free accessible mammograms, for women with disabilities with programming developed to directly address cancer screening barriers identified from the phase 1 research. CONCLUSIONS Long-term sustained partnerships between academic, disability, and clinical partners are needed to address the complex issues that perpetuate breast cancer screening disparities among women with disabilities.
Highlights
What Are the Findings?Women with disabilities identified provider and patient-side barriers to breast cancer screening, including a lack of provider knowledge and respect for disability, lack of accessibility, history of stigma and mistreatment within the health care setting, and treatment fatigue
To describe a trajectory of a long-term community–academic partnership aimed at understanding and addressing breast cancer screening disparities among women with disabilities, from collaborative qualitative research through communitybased programming
Breast cancer screening professionals must be trained in disability competence as a part of their basic training and during continuing education
Summary
Women with disabilities identified provider and patient-side barriers to breast cancer screening, including a lack of provider knowledge and respect for disability, lack of accessibility, history of stigma and mistreatment within the health care setting, and treatment fatigue. Collaboratives teams of graduate students and cancer survivors with disabilities created the short film “ScreenABLE” to educate providers and community members about physical and attitudinal barriers to cancer screening. Community, academic, and clinical partners collaborated to create ScreenABLE Saturday, a wellness fair for women with disabilities, the centerpiece of which was access to accessible mammograms. ScreenABLE Saturday programming was developed to directly address community-identified barriers to breast cancer screening
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