National Cancer Action Team

Raising public awareness

NCAT and its partners have a model for raising public awareness of cancer: test different approaches locally; test and evaluate regional campaigns; and if the results are encouraging, go national. 

Engaging primary and secondary care is an important component of awareness raising at all three levels.

Click here for NCAT's projects supporting cancer networks to engage primary care in raising awareness of cancer.

Click here for the Sharing and Learning Tool for Cancer Networks Supporting Primary Care.

See also Top Tips on Engaging Primary Care in public awareness raising campaigns: Learning from the regional bowel cancer campaign pilots here

2012/13 projects

A national lung awareness campaign will run from 8 May to 12 June. The Be Clear on Cancer Lung Campaign toolkit is here.

The Department of Health, NCAT and Cancer Research UK have produced briefing sheets for GPs and for the wider practice team which are on the CRUK lung cancer campaign page. More information is on the Department of Health website.

The Be Clear on Cancer lung toolkit is here

NCAT has commissioned a study to measure how many extra people went to their GPs as a result of the national bowel awareness campaign in 2012. Using a methodology tested during the regional bowel and lung pilots, Mayden consultants will compare the numbers who attended with specific symptoms during, and four weeks after, the end of the campaign with the numbers for the same weeks the previous year. Seventeen cancer networks and 400 general practices will take part. Mayden will analyse data from the EMIS system according to age and gender and the level of deprivation of the area. The Mayden reports are

Bowel cancer awareness campaign evaluation: Impact on patients attending GP appointments June 2011 here

Lung cancer awareness campaign evaluation: Impact on patients attending GP appointments Feb 2012 here

A Department of Health summary of public awareness campaigns for 2012/13 is here.

For more information contact Kathy Elliott Kathy.Elliott@ncat.nhs.uk

 2011/12 projects

• A national bowel cancer awareness campaign ran in January and February 2012 see Department of Health campaign website and press release; and letter from National Cancer Director Professor Sir Mike Richards to all GPs on 24 November 2011 here. See also note about how the campaign is targeting black and minority ethnic groups and an Urdu poster.

The campaign website developed by Bowel Cancer UK includes a factsheet and FAQ for GPS, a factsheet for practice managers, information about bowel cancer and other resources.

Useful background for the campaign is contained in slides of a presentation made to SHA cluster meetings in October 2011 (click here for part 1 and part 2) and in a document describing the methodology for estimating the likely increase in demand for lower GI endoscopy (click here) 

• A regional lung cancer awareness campaign ran for five weeks from 10 October in four cancer networks Arden, Pan Birmingham, Greater Midlands and East Midlands, and parts of five bordering networks Thames Valley, Three Counties, Anglia, North Trent and Greater Manchester.  See Mike Peake's presentation of lung cancer data at the 2010 lung cancer event here
• At local level, 18 projects are being funded on: oesophagogastric cancer; the symptom blood in urine (an indicator particularly for kidney and bladder cancers); and breast cancer in women over the age of 70. For information about running projects see CRUK website. Click here for a list of the projects. 

Click here for Avon, Somerset and Wilts' assessment of the potential impact on referrals and diagnostics of their 'Blood in Pee' awareness raising campaign

Click here for Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network's Be Clear On Cancer 'Blood in pee' campaign briefing paper

• Community outreach projects: NCAT organised a conference on 12 October to showcase projects that work with communities to raise awareness of cancer cllck here. 

• Key highlights of NAEDI, a presentation to the NAEDI Forum on 26/1/12, sets out policy and priorities for early diagnosis in 2012/13.

 

Local awareness raising projects

In 2010/11, public awareness raising projects were run in 109 PCTs. For information about running projects see CRUK website. For Department of Health press release Click here

In 2009/10, cancer networks and PCTs ran interventions to raise awareness of cancer through social marketing campaigns, volunteer led community initiatives or a combination of the two. For a report of the programme (including a short summary of each project) click here. See BJC evaluation for the Healthy Communities Collaboratives 

For reports of local awareness raising projects see below. Summaries of 19 community outreach projects are here. 

Dorset Cancer Network

Delivering Cancer Awareness to Gypsies & Travellers in Dorset poster

Essex Cancer Network

Essex Cancer Network Lung Cancer Awareness social marketing project: Interim Evaluation

Greater Manchester and Cheshire Cancer Network

Be Clear On Cancer Kidney and Bladder campaign briefing paper

GMCCN Don't be a Cancer Chancer Campaign Evaluation

Humber and Yorkshire Coast Cancer Network

Hull and East Riding early lung cancer detection: a behaviour change intervention

NE Lincolnshire cancer awareness project 

Lancashire and South Cumbria Cancer Network

Lancs and South Cumbria awareness training for frontline staff

Merseyside and Cheshire Cancer Network

iVan Cancer awareness and information progress report Dec 2011

North Trent Cancer Network

Doncaster early lung cancer intervention

South West London Cancer Network

A community-led social marketing pilot to increase awareness and early diagnosis of lung cancer, Oct 2011

 

Measuring public awareness – CAMs

Cancer Research UK and three university departments have developed a standard set of questions to measure cancer awareness. As well as the original cancer awareness measure (CAM), there are specialist CAMs for breast, lung, bowel, cervical and ovarian cancer; an international CAM;and some questions from the CAM have been included in the tracker survey for regional bowel cancer awareness campaigns. For the CRUK web page on the CAM, including information about how to access data from completed CAMs, Click here 

Supported by NCAT, cancer networks and PCTs have used the CAM locally to establish a baseline of cancer awareness; to shape their NAEDI strategies; to inform the design of projects and services; and, in some cases, to test whether the CAM can be used to measure the effectiveness of interventions in changing awareness.

Read about local use of the CAM - Article: Local awareness surveys set the agenda and shape interventions

For reports of local CAMs see - North of England Cancer Network; North London Cancer Network

Lancashire and South Cumbria Cancer Network's A telephone survey of cancer awareness among frontline staff: informing training needs is published in the British Journal of Cancer, July 2011