Cervical cancer is the leading cause of cancer mortality among women in Kenya, accounting for approximately 3,500 deaths each year, translating to almost 9 deaths every day.

Despite being largely preventable through HPV vaccination and screening, delivering this care remains difficult in Kenya, where limited health infrastructure, workforce shortages, and long distances to facilities leave many women without access to screening and treatment. Furthermore, low baseline knowledge of HPV and cervical cancer risk in the community is associated with low rates of screening and follow-up, which highlights the need for effective outreach and education in these screening programs. This work falls largely on community health promoters (CHPs), who are often responsible for the health needs of a large number of households at once. 

To bridge these gaps, the Duke Center for Global Reproductive Health (CGRH) co-developed mSaada, a mobile health application to facilitate HPV-based self-collection screening, in collaboration with the Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI). The tool guides CHPs through HPV and cervical cancer education, screening administration protocols, and electronic data capture. 

mSaada is currently being evaluated in a 12-month cluster-randomized controlled trial across 12 sites in Siaya County, with six sites using mSaada for HPV screening and six control sites relying on paper-based record-keeping. As a part of my Laidlaw research summer, I worked with the KEMRI x Duke CGRH team to administer cross-sectional surveys to approximately 450 women presenting for care across these sites to characterize individual-level screening engagement. This poster describes current HPV and cervical cancer knowledge, risk perception, and screening engagement among women enrolled in the mSaada study in Siaya County, Kenya. By characterizing the gaps between the women who attend clinics yet don’t screen, this analysis will allow us to inform changes to mSaada’s design and future screening models in the region.