Abstract: Increasing incidences of cancer have resulted in a heavy disease burden for the whole country and society, and early cancer screening is one of the critical bottlenecks for achieving early diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Traditionally, health education-based cancer screening interventions do not take into account the "irrationality " in people's decision-making on cancer screening, and as a result, there is still a large number of people failing to participate in early cancer screening. Advances in the behavioral sciences provide insights to nudge cancer screening. Depending on whether the nudge strategy involves reflective thinking and who is being nudged, cancer screening nudging strategies can be categorized into interventions that nudge recipients and providers through System 1 and interventions that nudge recipients and providers through System 2. We reviewed relevant research and synthesized current evidence on nudge interventions to increase cancer screening. Real-world studies are needed to explore the effectiveness and mechanisms of cancer screening nudging interventions and to develop culturally appropriate, integrated, digital, precise, and intelligent cancer screening nudging interventions, and contribute to achieving the goal of “cancan prevention and control initiative” of the “Health China Initiatives (2019-2030)”.

Key words: cancer screening, cancer prevention, nudge, behavioral intervention, behavioral public health