Journal of Community Medicine & Health Education
Open Access

Research Article

Pathways of Breast Cancer Screening Among Chinese American Women

Grace X Ma^1*, Carolyn Fang², Min Qi Wang³, Steven E Shive⁴ and Xiang S Ma⁵

¹Professor of Public Health, Department of Public Health, Director of Center for Asian Health, College of Health Professions, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

²Fox Chase Cancer Center, Cancer Prevention and Control Program, 333 Cottman Ave, Philadelphia, PA 19111 USA

³Professor, Department of Public and Community Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA

⁴Research Associate, Center for Asian Health, Temple University, USA, and Department of Health, East Stroudsburg University, East Stroudsburg, PA

⁵Center for Asian Health, College of Health Professions and School of Medicine, Temple University, Philadelphia, USA

*Corresponding Author:

Grace X Ma, PhD
Professor of Public Health, Department of Public Health
Director of Center for Asian Health, College of Health Professions
Temple University, 1301 Cecil B. Moore Ave.
913 Ritter Annex, Philadelphia, PA, 19122-0843, USA
Tel: 215-204-5108, 215-787-5434
Fax: 215-787-5436
E-mail: grace.ma@temple.edu

Received date April 02, 2013; Accepted date: April 16, 2013; Published date: April 19, 2013

Citation: Ma GX, Fang C, Wang MQ, Shive SE, Ma XS (2013) Pathways of Breast Cancer Screening Among Chinese American Women. J Community Med Health Educ 3:209. doi: 10.4172/2161-0711.1000209.

Copyright: © 2013 Ma GX, et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Objective: The purpose of this community-based study was to develop a structural equation model for factors contributing to breast cancer screening among Chinese American women.
Methods: A cross-sectional design included a sample of 440 Chinese American women aged 40 years and older. The initial step involved use of confirmatory factor analysis, which included the following variables: access/satisfaction with health care, enabling, predisposing, and cultural and health belief factors. Structural equation model analyses were conducted to evaluate factors related to breast cancer screening in Chinese American women.
Results: Initial univariate analyses indicated that women without health insurance were significantly more likely to report being never-screened compared to women with health insurance. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to evaluate the utility of the Socio cultural Health Behavior model in understanding breast cancer screening among Chinese American women. Results indicated that enabling and predisposing factors were significantly and positively related to breast cancer screening. Cultural factors were significantly associated with enabling factors and satisfaction with healthcare. Overall, the proposed model explained 34% of the variance in breast cancer screening
among Chinese American women.
Conclusions: The model highlights the significance of enabling and predisposing factors in understanding breast cancer screening behaviors among Chinese American women. In addition, cultural factors were associated with enabling factors, reinforcing the importance of providing translation assistance to Chinese women with poor English fluency and increasing awareness of the critical role of breast cancer screening. Partnering with community organizations may help to facilitate and enhance the screening rates.

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