Evaluation of Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Women on Breast Cancer and its Screening: A Step towards Health Reform

Breast cancer is the most common type of female cancer in most countries, and is the leading cause of death among women. This study aimed to evaluate the knowledge, attitude, and practice of women on breast cancer and its screening as a step towards health system reform.

This descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted on 185 non-pregnant women selected from the population covered by urban health centers in Neishabour, Razavi Khorasan, Iran, using the cluster sampling method in 2017. The necessary data were collected by a researcher-made questionnaire and analyzed in SPSS software (version 17) using the Pearson correlation coefficient, one-way ANOVA, Tukey's test, and independent t-test.

The mean age of the subjects was calculated at 35.77±8.44. Moreover, in this study, the mean score of knowledge, attitude, and practice towards breast cancer was obtained as 20.22±12.51, 177.1±42.27, and 1.67±1.73. The results of the Pearson correlation coefficient indicated that there was a significant positive relationship between the subjects' knowledge and practice (p < 0.001).

The findings of this study showed that the level of knowledge, attitude, and practice of the studied women towards breast cancer and its screening was low. Accordingly, it is required to emphasize the adoption of a behavior control approach to the training of screening methods to detect breast cancer at early stages.