Objectives: to increase participation of immigrant women at cervical cancer screening programmes.
Design: pre-post study to evaluate the efficacy of recall by phone call in immigrant women.
Setting and participants: 6,133 immigrant women in Cesena (Emilia-Romagna Region, Northern Italy) who have never made a Pap test in the last three years.
Main outcome measures: increment of percentage of immigrant women who participated in cervical cancer screening.
Results: the recall by phone call and counselling by linguistic mediators to immigrant women from high-pressure to migrate Country moved their participation percentage to cervical screening programmes from 46% (period 2006-2008) to 56% (period 2011-2013). Linguistic mediators contacted 2,131 of these women and they verified that 1,437 of them have not made a Pap test in the last three years. These women were suggested to do the Pap test and 555 of them (39%) did it; these tests cost about 25 euros each for counselling and telephone recall. Pap tests, colposcopies, and histology results permitted to find out and treat: 2 cervical dysplasia of grade I (mild), 3 of grade II (moderate), and 3 of grade III (severe). These 6 women with moderate or severe dysplasia had an average age of 37 years and have never done a Pap test. The cost to find out these cases of moderate or severe dysplasia was about 2,000 euros each.
Conclusion: the recall phone call and counselling by linguistic mediators is effective and low cost to increase the participation of foreign women in screening programmes.