Norway has a national screening program against cervical cancer, where all women 25-69 years are invited to take a screening test every third year. The overall coverage, and particularly among the youngest women, aged 25 to 29, is unsatisfactory. When the program started in 1995, the attendance was at its peak, at 73 percent. The coverage rate has decreased continuously since, to an all-time low in 2012, at 52 percent.
By connecting different actors concerned with the low coverage, the idea was to create a campaign using different media channels, but with particular emphasize on social media networks. Involved in the campaign were: The Norwegian Cancer society, Det Nye, a glossy magazine for young women and The Norwegian Cancer Registry.
A national campaign, #sjekkdeg (“get checked”), was launched in September 2015 after a young blogger diagnosed with cervical cancer started blogging about her disease in March 2015.
The campaign included: short films featuring young, female Norwegian celebrities, editorial pieces in the magazine Det Nye, press coverage in other mainstream media (more than 60 reports), blog posts (3,2 million views) and social media activity with the hashtag #sjekkdeg (more than 700 postings on Instagram). The number of registered screening tests, and 3.5 year screening coverage by age, were calculated from the national screening databases at the Cancer Registry of Norway.
In 2015, the number of registered screening tests among women in the age group 25 to 29 increased by more than 6500 (13 percent) compared with the year before.
The total coverage for the years 2012-2014 among women aged 25 to 29 was 54.9 percent (Poisson exact 95 percent confidence interval from 54.6 to 55.3 percent). By the end of 2015, the 3.5 year coverage had increased significantly to 59.1percent (95 percent CI 58.7-59.4 percent)
Raised awareness on cervical cancer in Norway has contributed to increased attendance to the screening program over the latest years. It is also reasonable to think that a large proportion of the increase can be attributed to the #sjekkdeg-campaign in 2015. This campaign indicates that unconventional thinking can be useful, and that employing new media channels that reaches the target audience directly can affect the screening coverage.
The results from the first year of the campaign has ensured the parties in the collaboration that the work should continue, with new campaign periods.