Supporting cancer screening uptake in South Asian women: the wise up to cancer public health intervention

British South Asian women’s uptake of cervical, breast, and bowel cancer screening is lower than the national average. ‘Wise up to cancer’ is a public health intervention, used with the general public, partly designed to increase cancer screening uptake. This work package from a larger study aimed to assess whether the ‘Wise up to Cancer’ intervention, delivered in different community settings, would increase South Asian women’s intention to access overdue screening. We conducted a mixed methods study to implement and evaluate ‘Wise up to Cancer’ with purposively selected women of Southeast Asian origin, aged 25–74 thus eligible for one or more screenings. Trained peers delivered the initial intervention (questionnaire) and researchers delivered follow-up telephone calls. Responses to closed-ended questions were analyzed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) and free-text responses were analyzed using qualitative content analysis. ‘Wise up to Cancer’ increased women’s intentions to take up cervical and breast cancer screening but not bowel screening. Pharmacies were more successful in engaging women in the intervention than community/faith-based settings. These results can be used to inform tailoring of future interventions designed to increase cancer screening uptake in this population, but more work is needed to encourage the uptake of bowel screening.