Timely reminder interventions to improve annual Papanicolaou (Pap) smear rates among HIV-infected women in an outpatient center of southern Nevada: a short report

ABSTRACT

Current guidelines recommend annual Papanicolaou (Pap) smears for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-infected women for cervical cancer screening. Rates for such screening in Nevada are below the national rate. Our cohort includes 485 eligible HIV-infected adult women from an outpatient center in Southern Nevada of which only 12 women had obtained a Pap smear in the past year. An intervention was conducted from June 2015 to September 2015, in which reminders to schedule a Pap smear were sent to the remaining cohort of 473 women via sequential text messaging, followed by phone call attempts. Of all subjects, 94% contacted by text messages and 41% contacted by phone calls were successfully reached. There was an increase in the rate of completed Pap smears from 2.5% (12/485) at baseline to 11.8% (56/473) after interventions (p < 0.0001) in a period of three months. Out of the 68 Pap smear results, 20 (29.4%) were abnormal. Our intervention, utilizing methods of communication such as text messaging and phone calls, markedly increased the rate of completed Pap smear screening in our population.

KEYWORDS:

• HIV-infected women
• Pap smear rates
• interventions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the HRSA Ryan White Part D Program under the [award number 6H12HA24832-01-01] and HealthySunrise Foundation under the [award number 201505001].