Nearly 1 in 3 women ages 21 to 29 have never had a cervical cancer screening , up from about 1 in 8 in 2005, according to a study published August 27, 2026, in JAMA Network Open. Kara Egan, co-founder and CEO of Teal Health, thinks part of the problem is a name. “It’s important that we move away from the colloquial term Pap smear and call it a cervical cancer screening,” she argued.

Teal Health, maker of the first FDA-authorized device for at-home cervical cancer screening, announced a $22 million Series A on September 22, 2026. Starting Jan. 1, 2027, most health plans must cover at-home screening with no cost-sharing. Coverage will help. But closing the gap also depends on whether women know what the test is for, and whether they follow through when the results come back.

Why The Name Pap Smear Undercuts Cervical Cancer Screening

The problem is large and growing. Researchers at the Medical University of South Carolina’s Hollings Cancer Center found that the share of never-screened women ages 21 to 29 rose from 12.5% in 2005 to 31.9% in 2023, or about 6.2 million women, using National Health Interview Survey data. Among women ages 30 to 65, the never-screened share climbed to nearly 1 in 7.

Egan traces part of the decline in testing to changes in the test itself. The Pap smear arrived in the 1940s, and women repeated it yearly. “Because the Pap smear is not that accurate, you actually did it every year,” she explained. Researchers later found that HPV causes most cervical cancers. HPV testing, now the preferred method, lets women at average risk screen every three to five years. That is better medicine, but it broke the annual habit that kept many women coming back.

The name doesn’t help. “Nobody’s ever said it’s a cervical cancer screening,” Egan noted. She compared it with breast cancer, where most women connect the mammogram to the disease it looks for. The JAMA study found that 44% of Asian women ages 21 to 29 and 39% of women with only a high school education had never been screened. Egan reads both figures as awareness problems more than access problems.

The American Cancer Society now recommends starting screening at 25 and using primary HPV testing. Egan expects that shift to open at-home screening to more first-time screeners. About 13% of Teal’s customers, all 25 and older, had never been screened before, according to the company.

Most Women Don’t Think Of Themselves As Under-Screened

Public health experts talk about “barriers” and “access.” Egan doubts women use those words about themselves. “I don’t think women are sitting around thinking ‘I’m under-screened’,” she observed. Instead, they “are just busy, and it’s hard to find time.”

Finding an appointment is harder than it sounds. About 27% of the U.S. population lives in a federally designated primary care Health Professional Shortage Area , according to the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA). Egan pointed out that half of the people in those areas live in cities, not rural communities. Teal made 50-state availability a priority, and 16% of its customers live in rural areas, according to the company.

Trust also plays a role. Many women who come to Teal “haven’t had good experiences with their doctors, or just have past trauma, whether that’s sexual or birth trauma,” according to Egan. For them, at-home screening offers privacy and control . The company reports that 59% of its users were behind on screening or had never been screened.

Cervical Cancer Screening Only Works If Women Get Follow-Up Care

Screening is only half the job. “A cervical cancer screening is only as effective as its follow-up,” Egan stressed. She described the national picture as discouraging because “only about 50% of all women take a follow-up in the 12 to 18 months after.”

The payoff for getting follow-up right is large. Teal’s test looks for high-risk HPV, not cancer, so a positive result sends a woman to a follow-up exam where a clinician can confirm and treat precancerous changes “so it never even has to become cancer,” Egan added. That exam is also where cancer is diagnosed, which is why Egan ties Teal’s results to the follow-up. The company has detected cancer at five times the rate expected from general population screening, and “the way that we get that 5x increased rate of cancer is because she took her follow-up step.”

That is why Teal built its telehealth service around results as much as the device. A positive HPV result can mean waiting “the three months to get that in-person appointment,” Egan cautioned, and a woman who doesn’t understand the stakes may cancel it. In her view, the patient “also needs to not feel nervous while she waits.”

Health systems want the same closed loop before they sign on. They “just fundamentally are underwater,” Egan remarked, especially OB-GYN practices busy with deliveries and complex care. Teal launched a pilot with UC Davis Health earlier this year and is building electronic health record and lab integrations so more providers can prescribe the test.

The 2027 Coverage Mandate Won’t Reach Every Woman On Its Own

In January 2026, HRSA added patient-collected HPV screening to its women’s preventive services guidelines. That triggers a requirement that most health plans cover it with no copay, coinsurance, or deductible starting Jan. 1, 2027. Insurers moved early, Egan noted, “All of the largest health plans were already coming to understand how to solve this problem.”

Teal’s $22 million Series A will fund that rollout, including payer, health system, and provider partnerships. .406 Ventures led the round, which brings Teal’s total funding to $45 million. Kathryn Taylor Reddy, partner at .406 Ventures, pointed to the timing: “With insurance coverage expanding in 2027, Teal Health is positioned to transform how millions of women receive essential preventive healthcare.” Japan-based MPower Partners joined as Teal’s first international investor, alongside returning backers Emerson Collective, Forerunner, Labcorp, and Serena Ventures.

Egan worked as an investor at .406 Ventures before founding Teal. She called the firm’s decision to lead “so incredibly validating.” Matt Bettonville, investor at Yosemite, which manages Emerson Collective’s investments, stated, “For women who have put off screening or struggled to get an appointment, Teal has finally built an easy-to-use, accurate, and private solution.”

The mandate covers most private insurance, whether a woman gets it through her employer or buys it on the ACA marketplace ( HealthCare.gov ). Egan is candid that it reaches “people with commercial insurance” first. Women without insurance gain nothing from it, and nearly 32% of uninsured women ages 30 to 65 have never been screened, according to the JAMA study.

Reaching them takes state-by-state work. Teal is working with states to use funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program, which covers screening for uninsured women. It is also pursuing a Medicaid partnership in Florida. According to Egan, California has expanded at-home collection through its Medicaid program. Community health centers are a harder fit for now, since “their funding, in general, has kind of had a turbulent road this past year,” she explained.

Until coverage fills in, Teal costs $249 out of pocket, or about $99 with insurance. Even so, the company says 6% of its customers live in high-poverty zip codes, compared with 21% of the U.S. population.

Egan sees a double standard in “what society says a woman can spend her money on.” Paying for makeup is accepted, she noted, while paying for a health screening is often second-guessed. Screening “should be covered by insurance,” she acknowledged, but until it is, it “is 100% a good use of spend.”

Every Woman Can Help Close The Cervical Cancer Screening Gap

Egan tells the story of a friend, the mother of her son’s classmate, whose own mother died of cervical cancer. Screening “wasn’t common where she grew up,” Egan recalled, so after moving to the U.S., the mother didn’t know how much it mattered. Her daughters learned from her loss instead.

Egan’s answer is conversation. “Everyone’s a health influencer,” she contends, whether online or at a family dinner. Heading into the holidays, she proposes a simple step, “let’s tell people about screenings that are available.” Monthly articles about cervical cancer have more than tripled to over 10,000 since Teal came out of stealth, according to the company.

Her message to women who have never been screened is to start now, wherever they choose. “We don’t care how you get screened,” she emphasized. Persistent HPV “can take years and years to develop into cancer,” Egan reminded, which means a woman who has put it off still has time to catch it early. The first step is calling the test what it is.