Disparities in access to breast, colorectal, and cervical cancer screening programmes have intensified during the pandemic period. Findings of a health equity audit conducted by the Pavia Healthcare Protection Agency (Lombardy Region, Northern Italy).

Objectives: to evaluate the disparities in access to cancer screening programmes in the Province of Pavia (Lombardy Region, Northern Italy), along with identifying the factors influencing these disparities; to assess the impact of the pandemic emergency on invitation and screening coverage in the three organized screening programmes, which are provided free of charge to the target population.

Design: observational retrospective study covering both the pre-pandemic and the pandemic periods.

Setting And Participants: for breast cancer screening, the eligible population comprises women aged 45 to 74; colorectal cancer screening is offered to men and women aged 50 to 74; cervical cancer screening is tailored based on women age.

Population-based breast cancer screening in Pavia (northern Italy) in 2016-2018: Key performance indicators and sensitivity estimate.

Background And Aim: This study aims to assess the quality of the population-based breast cancer screening programme in Pavia, northern Italy computing its key performance indicators and estimating its sensitivity for the years 2016-2018.

Methods: Invitation and examination coverage, participation rate, recall rate, detection rate and positive predictive values were computed on the basis of data provided yearly to the Italian Ministry of Health. Sensitivity was estimated identifying interval cancers in the local Cancer Registry and computed with the proportional incidence method.