Mobile Cervical Cancer Screening – Bakersfield

With the mission of improving cervical cancer screening rates, the California Health Collaborative’s Every Woman Counts program and its partners have joined to provide bring higher standards of health care to underserved women in the region by bringing resources to them.

The mobile screening clinic will provide no-cost pap test, HPV tests, and patient education to eligible community members during this one-day event.

Cervical cancer is one of the most preventable and treatable cancers due to the availability of screening tests and vaccines. Most cases of cervical cancer occur in females who have not received proper screening. Increased screening in the form of routine Pap tests have contributed to significant declines in cervical cancer incidence and mortality over the past 40 years, however, nearly 8 million women aged 21 to 65 have not been screened in the last five years.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), about 12,000 women in the United States are diagnosed with cervical cancer each year. Approximately  4,200 women died of cervical cancer in the U.S. in 2017. The main cause of cervical cancer is the human papillomavirus (HPV), the most common virus transmitted during sexual contact worldwide. It is estimated that nearly all sexually active people will have HPV at some point during their lifetime. In males, HPV infection typically has no symptoms, regardless of type, and will go away on its own. In females however, infection by certain HPV types may lead to cervical cancer.

(America’s Health Rankings analysis of CDC, Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, United Health Foundation, AmericasHealthRankings.org).