The Rosy App's Success in Cervical Cancer Education

Rosy offers personalized and holistic solutions for sexual wellness. Our research-backed offerings span a woman’s entire lifespan, from menstruation through menopause and beyond.

I started Rosy out of a genuine need. While practicing as an Ob/Gyn, I came across many patients with sexual health concerns that were not being fully addressed in the medical setting. As part of my ISSWSH fellowship in sexual wellness, I discovered real evidence-based solutions for women who face sexual challenges. However, they are often ignored due to embarrassment and lack of proper physician time and training.

Over the past three years, Rosy has become home to the nation’s largest network of healthcare professionals that support women’s sexual health by focusing on getting the right information into the right hands, exactly when its needed. 8 percent of the nation’s OB/GYNs now refer their patients to Rosy, and we serve over 150,000 women.

Background-

In 2022, Rosy collaborated with Roche Diagnostics via the Roche Creasphere Program to create and test an in-app series focused on encouraging cervical cancer education and screening. About 13,000 new cases of cervical cancer are diagnosed each year in the United States, and 4,000 women die of this cancer (a disproportionate number being women of color).

Ryan Suk, Ph.D, The University of Texas Health Science Center in Houston, notes, Cervical cancer is preventable, but the incidence of the disease is higher than it should be, and there are large disparities in the rates of timely screening among women of different socio demographic groups.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic led to a substantial reduction in preventive healthcare, including HPV vaccinations and cervical cancer screenings, making this an urgent area of focus for the medical community.

Given our aligned missions to improve the health of women, Rosy and Roche partnered to investigate the efficacy of the Rosy platform as an educational intervention and tool to improve healthcare behavior. The overarching goal was to increase the number of women who undergo cervical cancer screening and decrease the number of future cases of late-stage cervical cancer.

Timeline + Sample Size-

Working with a limited amount of time during which to complete the pilot, the Rosy team completed the design and engineering efforts module in two weeks and were able to continue to iterate the format in real time. They then collected data for the following nine weeks from May 26, 2022 until July 31st, 2022. In that time, 4,003 women on the Rosy platform, ranging from ages 17-84, completed the intervention.

Method-

The in-app module on the Rosy platform began with a pre-test to assess the women’s baseline understanding of HPV, risk factors for cervical cancer, and the overall intention to discuss screening with their medical providers.

Users then completed a series of educational screens in keeping with Rosy’s typical in-app format that provided information on cervical cancer incidence, HPV and its relationship to cervical cancer, HPV transmission, risk factors for development of cervical cancer, and instructions on risk reduction.

Lastly, the intervention included a post-test to assess the difference before and after the intervention.

Pilot Outcomes-

At the conclusion of data collection, we observed the following outcomes-

The Rosy module increased understanding of HPV and cervical cancer by an average of 62 percent across all age groups. The Rosy module increased intent to discuss screening with providers by an average of 45 percent in all age groups, moving more than 800 women into a higher level of intention to discuss screening with their provider.

Jill Downey, Disease Area Marketing Manager (Cervical Cancer) at Roche Tissue Diagnostics commented: The Roche team was extremely impressed with Rosy and their objective. As a clinician, Dr. Harper saw an unmet need within her patient population and built an approachable and engaging platform around that need.

Through this partnership, we wanted to see if users would be willing to engage with content surrounding cervical cancer screening. We were very pleased with the overall engagement, specifically the intent to get screened as a result of engaging with the content.

Summary & Future Applications-

Rosy’s intervention was able to significantly increase women’s understanding of HPV and cervical cancer screening and prevention, as well as their intention to discuss appropriate screening strategies with their providers.

We are now a proven partner able to connect healthcare partners with their consumers and create positive change in educational and healthcare behavior outcomes while offering extensive value to the healthcare consumer. With continued scale, these opportunities have the ability to change not only the health of individuals but the health of larger populations as well.

Additional opportunities for partnership include personalized educational interventions in other important and underserved areas of health, novel research and data analysis, expanded healthcare consumer targeting specific to objectives, development of follow-up measures including reminders to schedule and discuss healthcare interventions, development of after-care reporting, and more.