Breast Cancer Screening among Muslim Women
Muslim women’s perceptions about breast cancer screening utilizing community-based rapid survey techniques.
CDU/UCLA collaborative project; Dr. Magda Shaheen, Drew PI (
magdashaheen@cdrewu.edu)
Muslim women residing in the United States are in need of culturally appropriate services and information concerning breast cancer. Although breast cancer prevalence is low among Arab, Iranian, South Asian, and African American women relative to Whites, breast cancer-specific mortality rates tend to be higher among these groups. The roles of culture, religion, and health care are poorly understood among Muslim women. Linguistically and culturally adapted breast cancer intervention for Muslim women is not available. In order to develop and implement a breast cancer promotion in this population, a thorough understanding of these factors is required. Our ultimate goal is to increase breast cancer awareness and screening among Muslim women. We hypothesize that Muslim women will show health care and behavioral needs related to breast cancer knowledge, perception, and barriers to services and information. Socio-cultural and religious factors could contribute to the disparity in cancer risk among this population. We propose to adopt and expand the Muslim Breast Cancer Task Force through which we will adapt breast cancer related materials and conduct a study to identify the potential factors that contribute to the disparity in breast cancer among this population in Southern California. The specific aims are to: 1) Adopt/expand the Muslim Breast Cancer Task Force; 2) Adapt available validated instrument and material using focus groups; and 3) measure community perception, needs, barriers, socio-cultural and religious factors, services, and information regarding breast cancer using survey interviews. We propose to use focus group to adapt and test the available validated questions and materials. Eight focus groups with demographics will be conducted among a convenience sample of Muslim women from the four target ethnicities. Using the adapted questionnaire, Interviews will be conducted among a random sample of 400 Muslim women. Benefits will be directly related to study outcomes, which can inform us about the perceptions, specific needs and barriers among the Muslim women. The findings will assist in the development of an appropriate program to increase breast cancer awareness and use of screening among Muslim women. Our contributions to the literature on the breast cancer and screening topic will be unique. It will not only increase awareness about breast cancer and screening among the four groups, but it may be transferable to other Muslim population.
