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Patient Navigation to Improve Breast Cancer Screening in Bosnian Refugees and Immigrants

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Abstract

Refugee women have low breast cancer screening rates. This study highlights the culturally competent implementation and reports the outcomes of a breast cancer screening patient navigation program for refuge/immigrant women from Bosnia. Refugees/immigrant women from Bosnia age 40–79 were contacted by a Serbo-Croatian speaking patient navigator who addressed patient-reported barriers to breast cancer screening and, using individually tailored interventions, helped women obtain screening. The proportion of women up-to-date for mammography was compared at baseline and after 1-year using McNemar’s Chi-Square test. 91 Serbo-Croatian speaking women were eligible for mammography screening. At baseline, 44.0% of women had a mammogram within the previous year, with the proportion increasing to 67.0% after 1-year (P = 0.001). A culturally-tailored, language-concordant navigator program designed to overcome specific barriers to breast cancer screening can significantly improve mammography rates in refugees/immigrants.

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Acknowledgments

This study was funded by grant from Susan G. Komen MA Affiliate to the MGH Chelsea Refugee Breast Cancer Navigator Program. Dr. Percac-Lima is also supported in part by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (1R18 HS019161-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chelsea HealthCare Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, 151 Everett Avenue, Chelsea, MA, 02150, USA

    Sanja Percac-Lima, Bosiljka Milosavljevic & Sarah Abernethy Oo

  2. Center for Community Health Improvement, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Sanja Percac-Lima, Bosiljka Milosavljevic, Sarah Abernethy Oo & Danelle Marable

  3. General Medicine Division, Department of Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, USA

    Sanja Percac-Lima

  4. Cancer Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA, USA

    Barbara Bond

Authors
  1. Sanja Percac-Lima
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  2. Bosiljka Milosavljevic
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  3. Sarah Abernethy Oo
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  4. Danelle Marable
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  5. Barbara Bond
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Correspondence to Sanja Percac-Lima.

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Percac-Lima, S., Milosavljevic, B., Oo, S.A. et al. Patient Navigation to Improve Breast Cancer Screening in Bosnian Refugees and Immigrants. J Immigrant Minority Health 14, 727–730 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-011-9539-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10903-011-9539-5

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