Developing tools to study inequalities in women’s access to breast and cervical cancer control activities in Brazil using health-related databases

Newton Fund – CONFAP – Research Councils UK

Title
Developing tools to study inequalities in women’s access to breast and cervical cancer control activities in Brazil using health-related databases

Duration
January 2015-August 2016

Summary
This Partnership aims to strengthen collaborations, identify knowledge gaps, and establish a research road map for generating evidence-based policies to address inequalities in Brazil.

It is focussing on examination of inequalities in women’s access to health care for the two most common female cancers in Brazil – breast and cervical cancers. It aims to:

• bring together a multi-disciplinary team comprising Brazilian and UK researchers and public health experts in cancer control, socioeconomic inequalities, and statistical methodology;
• investigate methodologies to link national breast and cervical screening data to Censuses, hospital, mortality, socio-demographic survey and cash transfer programme data;
• develop a conceptual framework to identify inequalities in access to breast and cervical cancer control activities, both at individual and area-based levels;
• design studies aimed at identifying demand (e.g. socio-economic status, belief system) and supply (e.g. services availability) barriers to health care, and the most context-specific strategies to target them.