Frontiers in Public Health (Jan 2025)

Awareness of lung cancer among urban residents in Sichuan Province and its impact on their willingness to choose medical institutions for cancer screening

  • Qi Chai,
  • Ruicen Li,
  • Ting Bao,
  • Zhibo Yang,
  • Qing Liu,
  • Feng Chen

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/fpubh.2024.1388140
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 12

Abstract

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IntroductionThis study aimed to investigate the current level of knowledge about lung cancer among urban residents in Sichuan Province and to assess its influence on their willingness to choose county-level or lower-level medical institutions for cancer screening.MethodsA total of 31,184 urban residents of Sichuan Province were included in the cross-sectional study. Binary logistic regression and propensity score matching (PSM) were used to assess the influence effect.ResultsThe results showed that (1) only 23.88% of the residents self-reported having good knowledge about lung cancer. They mainly acquired knowledge from the media (43%) and medical staff (42%). Only 33.5% of the participants had undergone lung cancer screening, with the main reasons being periodic physical examinations (54%) and physician recommendations (23%). (2) Binary logistic regression analysis revealed that knowledge of lung cancer was significantly associated with the participants’ willingness to undergo lung cancer screening at county-level or lower-level medical institutions [OR = 1.185, 95% CI (1.113 -1.263), p < 0.001]. (3) Using PSM, it was found that the willingness of residents who had good knowledge of lung cancer-related topics increased by 2.8% after using kernel matching, by 3.1% after using one-to-one nearest neighbor matching, and by 2.4% after using radius matching with a caliper size of 0.001. (4) After stratifying by psychological status, we found that among residents with unstable psychological status, the willingness of those who had good knowledge of lung cancer increased by 5.3% after using kernel matching, by 3.6% after using one-to-one nearest neighbor matching, and by 4.9% after using radius matching with a caliper size of 0.001.DiscussionImproving urban residents’ understanding of the disease could help improve the current situation of hierarchical diagnosis and treatment.Systematic review registrationhttps://www.crd.york.ac.uk/prospero/, identifier CRD42024556625.

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