Week 1 – Choice of topic
Improving breast cancer screening through health literacy of adolescents
There are more than 600 fatalities from breast cancer each year in New Zealand, where it is the third most frequent malignancy (Ministry of Health NZ, 2023). The main causes of racial inequalities in breast cancer survival were late diagnosis, deprivation, and uneven access to and quality of cancer care services (Tin Tin et al., 2018). I chose this topic as I work got the Cancer Control Agency of New Zealand Ministry of Health. My work revolves around providing equitable cancer care services to the population.
During my initial literature search, I came across papers related to health literacy in adolescents and improvement in noncommunicable diseases through health literacy. However, I did not find much information on health literacy related to breast cancer screening.
Great to see you have made a star ton your blog Irin. I wonder if the search term ‘health literacy’ is not specific enough for your literature search. How are you defining health literacy and can you think of other terms that you could incorporate into your search. Are you specifically going to focus racial inequalities in your research proposal? For you assignment you will need to explain why you are targeting adolescents?