The impact of health talk on cervical cancer screening behavior among women

The number of women who did cervical cancer (CC) screening was still low. The dominant barrier was the lack of knowledge, so increasing knowledge was significant to improve attitude and CC screening participation. Health talk is an information-sharing method with participatory, informal, and entertaining approaches that allow individuals to freely discuss health. The aim of this study was to determine an overview of the impact of health talk on CC screening behavior among women. This study was quasy-experimental with a pre-post test with a control group design. Enrolled 210 sexually active women aged 30-50 years by cluster sampling which was 105 for experiment groups and 105 for control groups. The independent variable was health talk, and the dependent variable was CC screening behavior, consist of knowledge, attitude, and practice. Data were collected by questionnaire, and observation, then analyzed used paired sample t-test, and MANOVA for knowledge and attitude, Mann Whitney U test used to determine the effect of the intervention to practice. Paired sample t-test obtained p = 0,000 in both groups for both variables; knowledge and attitude, overall Wilks’ lambda obtained p = 0,000. Mann-Whitney U test obtained p = 0.391 for practice. The result showed that health talk affected women’s knowledge and attitude. This study also found that educational level and occupational status were positively related to knowledge, attitude, and practice. And these additional findings are associated with health literacy, and this was the argument of the main findings. Statistically, health talk did not affect practice, only 13 women (8 from intervention groups, five from control groups) who participated CC screening after the intervention. Further researchers suggested to conduct studies related to CC screening participation improvement, consider various factors, and add other methods to increase CC screening participation.