January is Cervical Health Awareness Month — a good time to check in with your health care provider to schedule a cervical cancer screening. Anyone with a cervix can get cervical cancer, and prevention through early detection is key. Every day, 35 women across the U.S. are diagnosed with invasive cervical cancer, and many hundreds more are diagnosed with precursors that could lead to it. While cervical cancer is often caused by one of the country’s most common sexually transmitted infections — the human papilloma virus (HPV) — it is also one of the most preventable forms of cancer.
Of the over 13,000 women in the U.S. annually diagnosed with cervical cancer, more than half have either never been screened or have not been screened in the past five years. Cervical cancer is caused by certain types of HPV; roughly 79 million Americans have HPV. In most cases, HPV is harmless, but high-risk HPV sometimes leads to cervical cancer.
A total of 4,210 women die of cervical cancer each year, including a disproportionately high number of women of color — who already bear the brunt of health disparities. Black and Hispanic women, for example, are more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage when their cervical cancer is much more difficult to treat. Hispanic women experience a 40 percent higher rate of cervical cancer than non-Hispanic white women, and Black women die from cervical cancer at a rate of 41 percent higher than white women.
Routine Pap and HPV screenings — like the ones Planned Parenthood provides every day — save the lives of thousands of women in the United States and around the world. The HPV vaccination is also a critical step in prevention, protecting against the two types of HPV that cause 70 percent of all cervical cancers.
Planned Parenthood of the Pacific Southwest offers cancer screenings at every single one of our 17 health centers, and in 2018 alone we provided more than 16,000 Pap tests.
Planned Parenthood’s current guidelines for cervical cancer screenings are:
· Initial Pap test at age 21;
· Pap test every three years at ages 21–29;
· Pap or HPV test every three years, or both Pap and HPV tests every five years at ages 30–64; and
· More frequent screenings, or screenings past age 65 for certain people with higher risk, as determined by their doctor or nurse.
To schedule a screening, contact us at plannedparenthood.org or 1-888-743-PLAN.
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