What you need to know

• A pilot of new correspondence is being undertaken which aims to improve participation by under screened cohorts and promote self-collection.
• This correspondence will be distributed to around 400,000 cervical screening participants throughout May – July 2021.
• There will be an increased demand on cervical screening tests during this period (July to October 2021), including self-collect vaginal swabs.

Background

The Department will test newly designed correspondence against its current correspondence, to identify the best way to encourage participation in this group of Australians.

The Department, through the National Cancer Screening Register, will be disseminating correspondence to initial pilot cohorts during July to October 2021; which will be then evaluated to inform a broader roll-out in early 2022. An NCSP letter and information sheet will be sent to people identified as very under-screened or never-screened for the National Cervical Screening Program

The Department will be using this pilot as an opportunity to actively promote self-collection through the designed correspondence, as all participants in this cohort will be eligible.

The Department has advised that there may be impacts for practices in terms of activity within the National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP) which may result in a small increase in appointments booked for cervical screening and an increase in requests for self-collected HPV tests, from July to October 2021.

Want to know more

Please send any queries regarding the pilot to NCSPCommittees@health.gov.au