Abstract
Background: Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in Korea. To reduce cancer incidence, the KoreanNational Cancer Center (KNCC) has been expanding its organized cancer screening program. In addition,there are opportunistic screening programs that can be chosen by individuals or their healthcare providers. Thepurpose of this study was to investigate factors associated with participation in organized and opportunisticcancer screening programs, with a particular focus on socioeconomic factors. Materials and
Methods: Weused data from the Korea National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (KNHANES), a cross-sectionalnationwide study conducted by the Korean Ministry of Health and Welfare from 2007 to 2011. The studyincluded information from 9,708 men and 12,739 women aged 19 years or over. Multinomial logistic regressionanalysis was conducted, adjusting for age, year of data collection, residential region, current smoking status,current alcohol consumption status, exercise, marriage status, job status, perceived health status, stress level,BMI, limitation of activities, cancer history, health insurance type, and private insurance status, to investigatethe association between education level, economic status, and cancer screening participation.
Results: In termsof education level, disparities in attendance were observed only for the opportunistic screening program. Incontrast, there was no association between education level and participation in organized screening. In termsof economic status, disparities in opportunistic screening participation were observed at all income levels, butdisparities in organized screening participation were observed only at the highest income level.
Conclusions: Ourfindings reveal that socioeconomic factors, including educational level and economic status, were not significantlyassociated with participation in organized cancer screening, except at the highest level of income.
Keywords
)