Describing access to permanent and visiting screening sites
In this report, the term, ‘service frequency’, is used to grade how frequently screening sites are available to a population. Table 2 shows how different service frequency categories are acquired from the 5 types of screening site active from 2021–2024.
For example, women with access to permanent sites necessarily have access to a site ‘open permanently’, as well as one ‘open at least annually’ and ‘open at least every 2 years’.
Because some women – particularly in rural areas – may be able to drive to alternative visiting sites in different years, the service frequency in an area may be more favourable than the available types of screening site would suggest. Those scenarios are detailed in Table 2.
Note that to maximise the relevance of the results, efforts were made to represent the availability of services in 2023 and 2024 as a priority. For example, new services or changes to existing services in 2023 or 2024 (anticipated) were allowed to override availability in 2021 and 2022. Similarly, services that were discontinued between 2021 and 2023 were excluded from the standard results – only being included in the category, ‘open at least once from 2021 to 2024’, which shows in the dashboard and other geographical results.
For more detailed information, see the Technical notes.
Service frequency | Permanent sites | Annual sites | Biennial sites | 4-yearly sites | Infrequent, trial or discontinued sites |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Open permanently | ✓ |
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Open at least annually | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ if alternative sites can be reached in each year |
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Open at least every 2 years | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ if alternative sites can be reached in every second year |
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Open at least once from 2021 to 2024 | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ | ✓ |
✓ At least one of these sites must be accessible or conditions must be met to acquire each service frequency.
Note: No sites were deemed to visit on a 3-yearly cycle.