AIHW - National Cancer Screening - Participation in the National Cervical Screening Program (SA3) 2014-2016

This dataset presents the footprint of participation statistics in the National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP) for women aged 20 to 69, by age group. The NCSP began in 1991. It aims to reduce cervical cancer cases, illness and deaths in Australia. The data spans the years of 2014-2016 and is aggregated to Statistical Area Level 3 (SA3) from the 2011 Australian Statistical Geography Standard (ASGS). Cancer is one of the leading causes of illness and death in Australia. Cancer screening programs aim to reduce the impact of selected cancers by facilitating early detection, intervention and treatment. Australia has three cancer screening programs:

BreastScreen Australia

National Cervical Screening Program (NCSP)

National Bowel Cancer Screening Program (NBCSP)

The National cancer screening programs participation data presents the latest cancer screening participation rates and trends for Australia's 3 national cancer screening programs. The data has been sourced from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) analysis of National Bowel Cancer Screening Program register data, state and territory BreastScreen Australia register data and state and territory cervical screening register data. For further information about this dataset, visit the data source:Australian Institute of Health and Welfare - National Cancer Screening Programs Participation Data Tables. Please note:

AURIN has spatially enabled the original data.

Participation in the NCSP for this report was defined as the percentage of women in the population aged 20-69 who had at least one Pap test in a 2-year period. Participation rates were calculated using the average of the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) Estimated Resident Population (ERP) for females aged 20-69 for the relevant 2-year reporting period adjusted for the estimated proportion of women who have had a hysterectomy.

An SA3 was assigned to women using a postcode to SA3 correspondence. Because these are based only on postcode, these data will be less accurate than those published by individual states and territories.

Postcode is used for mailing purposes and may not reflect where a woman resides.

Some postcodes (and hence women) cannot be attributed to an SA3 and therefore these women were excluded from the analysis. This is most noticeable in the Northern Territory but affects all states and territories to some degree.

SA3s with a numerator less than 20 or a denominator less than 100 have been suppressed.

SA3 data for Blue Mountains - South, Christmas Island, Cocos (Keeling) Islands, Cotter - Namadgi, Fyshwick - Piallago - Hume, Illawarra Catchment Reserve, Jervis Bay, and Lord Howe Island were excluded due to reliability concerns from low numbers in these regions.

Some duplication may occur where the same test is reported to the cervical screening register in two or more jurisdictions. This may lead to erroneous results when focusing on smaller geographical areas. This may affect border areas more than others.

Totals may not sum due to rounding.

Data are preliminary and subject to change.

The 2014-2015 period covers 1 January 2014 to 31 December 2015, and the 2015-2016 period covers 1 January 2015 to 31 December 2016.