Objective: To see if refugee women at a community health centre (CHC) in Toronto, Ont, are appropriately screened for cervical cancer and if there are any demographic characteristics that affect whether they are screened. Design: Chart review. Setting: A CHC in downtown Toronto. Participants: A total of 357 eligible refugee women attending the CHC. Main outcome measures: Papanicolaou test received or documented reason for no Pap test. Results: Ninety-two percent of women in the study sample were either appropriately screened for cervical cancer or had been approached for screening. Eighty percent of women were appropriately screened. Demographic variables including pregnancy, being uninsured, not speaking English, recent migration to Canada, and being a visible minority did not affect receipt of a Pap test after migration in multivariate analyses. Not speaking English was associated with a delay to receiving a first Pap test after migration. Conclusion: The clients at our centre are demographically similar to women who are typically overlooked for Pap tests in the greater Toronto area. Despite belonging to a high-risk population, refugee women in this multidisciplinary CHC were screened for cervical cancer at a higher rate than the local population.

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Vaginal Smears medically uninsured Proportional Hazards Models demography community care human Refugees middle aged Practice Guidelines as Topic Guideline Adherence Aged cancer screening Logistic Models Early Detection of Cancer Community Health Centers Young Adult Humans Adolescent Canada female medical documentation Multivariate Analysis pregnancy high risk population Article Retrospective Studies Ontario major clinical study adult uterine cervix cancer migration Uterine Cervical Neoplasms Papanicolaou Test English as a second language practice guideline