ABSTRACT
Screening mammogram utilization is a critical issue in early detection of breast cancer. However, it is underutilized by different sectors, particularly low-income women. The objective of this study was to utilize the method known as focus group to probe into obstacles to screening mammogram among low-income women in the ages 40 to 64 in Puerto Rico once they had a physician's referral. The women in the study had knowledge of breast self-examination, clinical breast exam and mammogram as tests to detect breast cancer. Yet, they had no adequate knowledge about current screening guidelines. Attitudes toward pain or discomfort related to the mammogram and fear of a breast cancer diagnosis were the personal reasons most often cited for non-compliance in the focus group discussions. In the case of external or systemic barriers, the most prevalent reasons offered were: cost of the mammogram, transportation, and negative factors associated to the doctor-patient relationship.
Subject(s)
Humans , Female , Adult , Middle Aged , Patient Compliance/statistics & numerical data , Mammography , Mass Screening , Poverty , Age Factors , Breast Neoplasms , Breast Self-Examination , Fibrocystic Breast Disease/diagnosis , Mammography , Physician-Patient Relations , Risk Factors , Transportation , VocabularyABSTRACT
Analysis of the access to abortion in Puerto Rico is important because, together with Cuba, they are the only countries where abortion is legal in Latin America. This article analyzes the socio-political trends of the debate and discourses through which the discussion of the pro-option and antiabortion sectors have developed in the current situation of Puertorican law and their links with the arguments of those sectors in the United States. Even in this framework of legality, the right to abortion in Puerto Rico has been the object of a process of attacks by the antiabortion sectors that has limited its exercise, and it continues to be a taboo and polemical matter; maybe tolerated, but questioned and undermined as a right, and as a result, delegitimized. The Island situation makes it possible to consider that eradicating the legal prohibition of the practice is not a sufficient element for abortion to become a social need and a right of women in their own conscience, in public opinion and in state interventions.