Cross-sectional study of association of college attendance and physical disability with cervical cancer screening

Cervical cancer screening (CCS) in the US is far from the US Healthy People 2030 goal of 79.2%, and has continued to decline over the past 2 decades. Research has suggested that women with physical disability engage in less CCS than the general US population. A cross-sectional study using the Truveta database examined the association of college attendance and physical disability with CCS. The study included women aged 20 to 60 years in 2016 with records through 2022. The analytic population included 2 265 395 women, including 15 727 (0.7%) with physical disability (median age 47 years; IQR 37-55; 63.5% underwent CCS) and 2 249 668 without physical disability (median age 44 years; IQR 33-53; 70.9% underwent CCS). Women with physical disability had significantly lower odss of CCS (OR 0.79; p<0.001). In particular, the odds of CCS for women with physical disability versus those without were progressively lower as women aged. Women with physical disability who attended some (versus none) college had similar, nonsignificant odds of CCS as those without physical disability (OR 1.02; p=0.91). The authors conclude that this cross-sectional study found that some college attendance completely mitigated the negative influence of advancing age, race, ethnicity, and physical disability on CCS.