The National Health Service England is expanding its Cervical Screening Programme with at-home HPV testing for women who are not up to date.
The program will initially reach women ages 30 to 65 who have not accepted NHS invitations for in-person screenings. Participants will receive a swab-based at-home test and free return postage back to the NHS, where samples will be screened for high-risk HPV.
The rollout aims to reach 4 million women who are behind on screening. While up to 93% of cervical cancer cases are preventable, only about two-thirds of eligible women in the UK regularly attend NHS screenings, below the program’s 80% target.
The initiative builds on a 2021 YouScreen trial from NHS England and King’s College London, which found that at-home collection could boost total screenings across the UK by 400,000 women annually.
The UK rollout follows similar moves in the US. Following FDA approval, Teal Health’s self-collection kits are available nationwide, as a partner study with UC Davis aims to validate the use of at-home HPV self-collection in clinical workflows.
While the NHS continues to recommend in-person screenings, the offering of at-home collection will target millions of women who have missed appointments due to HPV miseducation, scheduling conflicts, or medical anxiety. The initiative’s broader goal aims to eliminate cervical cancer by 2040.
