Awareness Level about Breast Cancer Risk Factors,Barriers, Attitude and Breast Cancer Screening among Indonesian Women

Background: Globally, breast cancer is the second most common cancer in women and is a leading cause of mortalityin Indonesia. Raising awareness of breast cancer is particularly important to help at risk women seek medical treatmentfor this disease. This study aimed to comprehensively investigate the Indonesian women’s level of knowledge aboutbreast cancer risk factors, barriers, attitude and breast cancer screening. Methods: This population-based cross-sectionalstudy administered the breast cancer awareness Indonesian scale (BCAS-I) to 856 Indonesian women. Samples wereselected in rural and urban combinations from three provinces by stratified random sampling. The ordinal logisticmodel was used to investigate the clustering effect of the participant’s characteristics in this study. Results: Of thewomen, 62% lived in rural areas and 38% lived in urban areas. Living in an urban area was significantly associatedwith a lower knowledge of the risk factors. However, living in an urban area was significantly associated with betterattitudes and healthier behaviours related to breast cancer awareness. Women with higher education levels had 70%worse attitudes toward breast cancer awareness. Women living South of Sumatera, women living in Yogyakarta, andunmarried women were 5.03, 3.84, and 1.56 times as likely to have higher perceived barriers, respectively. Conclusion:Urban women had a poorer level of knowledge of breast cancer risk factors compared to women living in more ruralareas. The result of this study may reflect inadequate breast cancer awareness campaigns or a lack of breast cancerawareness campaigns. These findings suggest that additional education programs aiming to increase awareness andeducate the public are needed.