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Promoting Cancer Awareness

Promoting cancer awareness, help-seeking for possible cancer symptoms, and participation in cancer screening programmes and reducing health inequalities

People balanced on large scale

20 June 2024

Background

Taking part in national cancer screening programmes and seeking help for symptoms can help to diagnose cancer earlier. Inequalities in screening uptake and help seeking, such as those experienced by people with learning disabilities, contribute to wider inequalities in early diagnosis and cancer survival.聽

Aims and objectives

Working in partnership with NHS England and screening programmes colleagues, we will explore opportunities to develop campaign concepts to improve uptake of screening participation across different programmes, including symptomatic presentation as another early detection behaviour.聽

  • To understand variation in screening and help-seeking behaviours, particularly among groups who are not always included in research (e.g. people with learning disabilities), including by exploring a wider range of potential influences, such as those related to the concept of candidacy (that is, how people鈥檚 eligibility for healthcare is decided between themselves and health services).
  • To use an intersectional lens (thinking about how different characteristics, such as learning disability and age, are linked) to develop a fuller understanding of how and why differences in peoples鈥� screening and early diagnosis behaviours happen.聽
  • To co-design and test new campaign messages to improve early diagnosis behaviours.聽

Policy Relevance & Dissemination鈥�

There is an urgent need to both: Progress the evidence base for ongoing investment in public health education campaigns and other interventions to improve behaviours conducive to early diagnosis, and: Reduce healthcare inequalities in help-seeking and participation in cancer screening, both nationally and between/within local geographies in line with Core20PLUS5 and the NHS Long-term Plan.Publications, short reports, presentations and events will be used to disseminate findings to policy makers, academics and the public.

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