Chinese Cancer Prevention Study(CHICAPS)

Screening and prevention programs in general, throughout the world, suffer from major cost constraints, poor participation, lost to follow-up, and concerns about sustainability.

Over the past 15 years the investigators have been studying self-collection as a way to reach the medically underserved for cervical cancer screening. In a recent 10,000 patient randomized clinical trial they demonstrated that a self-collected sample is equivalent in accuracy to a physician obtained endocervical specimen and can be done less expensively and with higher throughput than all current and proposed accurate testing modalities.

With the majority of the worlds' medically underserved now living in middle income countries, it is no longer necessary to think small, slow, and simple, with poor quality control. It is totally achievable with self-collection to have centralized, high-throughput, low cost per case processing, and to reach millions of women in a short period of time. Again, these concepts need not be restricted to the medically underserved, but the clarity of this paradigm is a realistic solution for a critical developing world healthcare problem. In addition, we now have solid media specimen transport cards, thereby avoiding the logistics of dealing with personal use of alcohol-based liquids, concerns about exposure temperature, and ease of transportation. Using PCR-based technologies in a self-collection algorithm has the ability to not only make the testing highly sensitive, but help to address another key issue and that is how to manage the positives. In the investigators' proposed centralized model, since the primary output of the testing provides genotyping a reasonable option for tailoring the management of the positives would exist.

Now the need is to focus on developing the models that will enable them to efficiently place the existing technologies next to the women who need them the most. Developing community based systems that remove the identification of who is abnormal from the medical model, will markedly affect the cost of preventive healthcare. In addition with community involvement in the design of the program, it is expected that their participation in the "campaigns" and follow-up will be significantly improved. Sustainability also becomes a simpler problem because of the "campaign" or "event" type model (possibly once/year, or per every 5-10years). The investigators believe that the patient recruitment and loss to follow up observed in screening programs conducted in the developing world, have their roots in asking large numbers of patients, who are not presently ill, or symptomatic, to travel long distances and interrupt their daily life. The investigators believe that a much more effective program can be designed by the community, and using a self-collection model will ensure greater recruitment and participation, minimizing loss to follow up. This project CHICAPS is designed to further develop the community based screening model and in addition randomize treatment options to explore a technology more suited to rural environments