Turning Awareness into Action to Boost Cervical Screening

Turning awareness into action takes practical, community-based solutions and strong partnerships. Together with advocates and experts including HPV Global Action,² Women’s Health Coalition,³ The Society of Gynecologic Oncology of Canada (GOC),⁴ and The Society of Canadian Colposcopists (SCC),⁵ Hologic is aiming to increase access to screening and identify actionable solutions.

One approach is by hosting pop-up clinics: partnering with clinics to expand access by offering additional dedicated time for cervical screenings during Cervical Health Awareness Month and beyond. Pop-up clinics can help reach underserved communities, normalize routine screening, and make it easier for eligible women to move from intention to appointment.

Hologic and the Women’s Health Coalition also convened advocates and experts in January 2026 to discuss barriers and solutions to cervical screening, resulting in a white paper, Reversing the Dangerous Decline in Cervical Screening that spotlights why urgent action is needed now.

After a 30-year decrease, cervical cancer incidence has risen 3.7% each year since 2015, and in 2025, 1,650 women in Canada were diagnosed and 430 died from the disease.¹ Screening has also dropped since 2007 – in Ontario alone, 39.4% of eligible individuals are not up to date.^6,7 The paper highlights HPV primary screening as a key clinical advance and reinforces that equitable, culturally responsive, trauma-informed care is essential to closing access gaps.

Together, these collaborations help reduce real-world barriers and foster trust by bringing services and support directly to patients, and by offering practical, implementable solutions at the clinical level for providers and policy-makers. When more women get screened on time, cervical cancers can be found sooner and treated more easily.