Abstract
Breast cancer (BC) is a major public health problem in Saudi Arabia and worldwide and significantly affects the health of Saudi women. This study investigates the awareness and predictors of breast cancer among medical students at the University of Bisha, Saudi Arabia.
This cross-sectional study involved 391 medical students from the University of Bisha (Medicine and Applied Medical sciences) conducted from June to December 2022. Data were collected using a questionnaire with 27 questions. Data were analyzed using Stata/ BE 17.0 for Mac (Intel 64-bit) 1985-2021 Stata Corp LLC. All ethical issues were addressed honestly, including IRB and student consent.
In our study, almost half of the participants (49.36%) had suboptimal knowledge of general BC awareness, which was statistically significantly related to gender and previous participation in BC education (p-value < 0.05). Of the students (57%) showed a positive intention to participate in BC activities. Logistic regression models were used to identify factors that positively predicted student participation and engagement in BC activities. These factors showed a statistically significant relationship (p-value < 0.05), including previous participation (OR =1.557143), female (OR =1.412844), living in rural areas (OR =1.7075471), and medical applied sciences students (OR =1.439252).
Despite half of the participants having suboptimal awareness of BC, there was a significant willingness to engage in BC prevention activities. Therefore, we recommend further analysis to identify gaps in the medical curriculum and update it accordingly, as well as to plan an extracurricular activity to increase student awareness of breast cancer as part of the University of Bisha's social accountability.