Sharing data to improve BreastScreen Aotearoa participation and attendance

Hawke's Bay District Health Board's Mother’s Day campaign

This year, the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board Population Screening Team identified and contacted the health centres in Napier and Hastings with high Māori and Pacific enrolment numbers.

The health centres supported by Health Hawke’s Bay (PHO) were asked to provide a list of their registered and enrolled Māori and Pacific women aged 45–69 years to BreastScreen Coast to Coast (BSCC) for data matching.

This identified women who were not enrolled in the BreastScreen Aotearoa programme and those who hadn’t had a mammogram for more than five years.

Once the data was matched, the health centres gave consent for the information to be released directly to the population screening team.

The team sent out letters inviting the women to have a mammogram by the end of July. They were also offered assistance to attend their appointment from support to services providers, and a $20 Pak ’n Save gift card to acknowledge the effort required to attend their mammogram.

Important learnings when it came to matching the data were to:

• identify women who have been treated for breast cancer and are in the care of a specialist, and/ or women who don’t require a mammogram, to ensure they are not contacted
• complete another cross-check of the lists against the national episodes in NHI to identify women whose breast cancer was not originally detected through a BreastScreen Aotearoa mammogram.

The campaign was extended to the end of September due to the demand for appointments. By the end of the campaign, 119 Māori and Pacific women attended their mammogram in response to the letters sent to them. BSCC later followed up with the women who did not respond the first time and offered them another opportunity to attend. TRG, the fixed site for mammograms, supported this campaign by prioritising appointments for Māori and Pacific women.

Attendance at BreastScreen mobile units

Using learnings from previous BSA mobile visits to Hawke’s Bay, BSCC has worked to improve attendance at the mobile unit.

During the mobile unit visit to Flaxmere last year, the Population Screening Team had two support staff working closely with the BSA team, trying to locate Hawke’s Bay Māori and Pacific women who had not attended their appointments at the mobile. The kaimahi, Berry Rangi and Margaret Alexander, found that many women who had not attended had either not received their appointment letter or no longer lived at the current address. In some cases, they hadn’t done so for quite some time.

BSCC looked into ways to improve and update contact details to ensure women receive their appointment letter. A new process was trialled whereby all Māori and Pacific women who were sent an appointment for a mammogram at the mobile unit and who hadn’t confirmed their appointments were referred to the Hawke’s Bay District Health Board (HBDHB) Population Screening Team. Addresses and details were then cross-checked against the HBDHB patient management system. Once this information was updated with new details, including mobile numbers and so on, the women were referred to the relevant Independent Service Provider for follow up.

This new process was trailed first in Wairoa, in March and April this year. BSCC sent the data of 132 Māori and Pacific women who had not confirmed their visit. All of these women were data matched against the patient management system and then referred on to Kahungunu Executive. Their staff followed up with these women and let BSCC know the outcome, such as if the women had moved address, were unable to be located, or if staff were supporting women to attend. This mobile visit to Wairoa was very successful, with a reduction in the ‘did not attend’ rate to 7%.