Incarcerated women's HPV awareness, beliefs, and experiences

Pankey, Tyson

Ramaswamy, Megha

2023-04-03T12:44:01Z

2023-04-03T12:44:01Z

2015-03-16

2023-04-03T12:44:00Z

<jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Purpose</jats:title> <jats:p> – The purpose of this paper is to explore incarcerated women's awareness, beliefs, and experiences with human papillomavirus (HPV) infection and vaccination.</jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Design/methodology/approach</jats:title> <jats:p> – Researchers conducted focus groups with 45 incarcerated women in an urban Midwestern US jail to assess how women talked about their Papanicolaou (Pap) test screening and abnormal Pap test follow-up experiences. Some focus group questions specifically assessed individual awareness, beliefs, and experiences with HPV infection and vaccination. Based on these data, the authors described participants’ awareness of HPV, as well as used open coding to ultimately extract themes related to beliefs and experiences with HPV infection and vaccine. </jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Findings</jats:title> <jats:p> – While all 45 participants reported experiencing an abnormal Pap test event within the last five years, only two-thirds of participants (<jats:italic>n</jats:italic>=30) reported having heard of the HPV infection. Several themes emerged from the analysis of the data: the women's beliefs about cause and severity of HPV; frustration with age requirements of the vaccine; varied experiences with vaccinations for themselves and their children; the impact of media exposure on knowledge; and desire for more HPV infection and vaccine information. </jats:p> </jats:sec> <jats:sec> <jats:title content-type="abstract-heading">Originality/value</jats:title> <jats:p> – Incarcerated women's awareness and limited experiences with HPV infection and vaccination may be a barrier to adequate screening and cervical cancer prevention. This study has implications for the development of cervical health education for this high-risk group of women, who are four to five times as likely to have cervical cancer as non-incarcerated women.</jats:p> </jats:sec>

1744-9200

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/26981

en

Emerald

International Journal of Prisoner Health

10.1108/ijph-05-2014-0012

Incarcerated women's HPV awareness, beliefs, and experiences

Journal article

Pankey, Tyson|0000-0002-1301-5936

49

58

1

Duke

School of Medicine

Clinical Science Departments

Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Psychiatry, Child & Family Mental Health & Community Psychiatry

Published

11