Women with disabilities are less likely to obtain recommended reproductive cancer screening than women without disabilties, iincluding breast exams, mammograms, and PAP smears.

Women with disabilities are living longer. Therefore routine screening and preventive health services need to be part of their overall health care.

Women with disabilities have less access to preventive health services than any other group of women. Multiple factors act as barriers that may result in delayed detection and increased risk of poorer outcomes from breast and other reproductive cancers:

• Access -- uncertainty about the degree to which an environment is or is not accessible
• Lack of confidentiality or accuracy of communication between healthcare staff and women who have visual or auditory impairments
• The misconception that women with disabilities are less likely to develop certain types of cancer
• Providers who overlook the existence of sexual behavior in women with disabilities and therefore don't provide or recommend gynecological exams and other preventive care
• Symptoms not thoroughly investigated because they are discounted as part of the woman's disability.
• Providers who don't understand the interaction between a woman's health and her disability.

Women with disabilities are women first. They have the same concerns about health and health care as any woman.