Global Health Grand Challenge: Enable Self-Testing for Cervical Cancer

Like others of you, I read about developments in global public health and sometimes think about their domestic application. This challenge to "enable self-testing for cervical cancer" in the developing world really caught my eye.

We are a country steeped in the clinical medicine approach to cervical cancer screening. The biggest problem with that, is that a public health approach is what appears to lift screening levels in the riskiest population and lower mortality.  

Some of this testing, at least at the level of using self-HPV testing as a proxy for self-testing for cervical cancer, is already being tried in China.  

Here, social and cultural barriers to the Pap Test are not insignificant in some settings, particularly among Asian women in the U.S.

When you look at the cervical cancer death rates in the U.S. under the screens of race, ethnicity, and age you know we have our own "Grand Challenge."