Introduction
In spring 2022, Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance (CMCA) launched a Community Engagement initiative to improve early diagnosis of cancer and reduce inequalities in cancer outcomes across targeted areas. The initiative focused on distributing small grants to grassroots groups and organisations to develop socially and culturally sensitive approaches to raise awareness of cancer and encourage proactive health-seeking behaviour. For CMCA, it marked the beginning of a strong partnership with the voluntary sector and enabled access into communities that were showing the lowest levels of engagement with healthcare and the NHS. In the summer of 2023, the initiative evolved into ‘Community Partnerships’ and was scaled up to cover all nine areas across the region. Building on the foundations established in earlier work, the Community Partnerships initiative continues to raise awareness of cancer, facilitating direct engagement with vulnerable groups and communities who face barriers and challenges in accessing healthcare.
Groups and organisations all have one thing in common – they know their communities well and talk to them regularly. Perhaps these groups can facilitate conversations around cancer screening opportunities, could they help health professionals understand the barriers to early detection and help understand why some of those being offered screening are not attending their appointments? There is now a greater focus on early detection to improve cancer outcomes but people are often unsure about attending screening appointments or just don’t want to think about their health and so put it off. A conversation might be all that is needed for a screening appointment to be taken up.
Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance Community delivery lead Moray Hayman, who leads the programme, said:
“This initiative seeks to support local communities to reduce their risk of dying from cancer, by improving community understanding and awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer and encouraging appropriate health-seeking behaviour.
“We are also encouraging more people who experience cancer to be supported to achieve emotional wellbeing and to reduce stigma and discrimination relating to cancer diagnosis.
“By working with voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, the scheme focuses on improving knowledge of the signs and symptoms of cancer within local communities, encouraging more people to go for NHS screening when they are invited and to reduce inequalities in access to high-quality cancer treatment.”
If further information or support is needed, CVS will be happy to provide resources to allow groups to access the information they need. Look out for further posts from us and reach out to the CVS team for further details; together we aim to improve cancer outcomes through simple conversations.
This engagement is led by eight Social Action Leads, one of whom is Sector Development Officer at CVS Cheshire East, Lucy Coates, who has been part of the initiative since the beginning and continues to support grassroots community organisations and groups, offering guidance and resource to enable the delivery of community initiatives to give information on cancer signs and symptoms and promote screening in a bid to find cancer earlier when treatment is easier and more effective.
To date, over 200 organisations and groups have been given funding for projects to raise cancer awareness, leading to over 48,000 interactions with local communities
Jon Hayes, CMCA Managing Director, said: “Together with our eight Council for Voluntary Service partners, we have developed an innovative community delivery model to empower our communities to own information to reduce their risk of cancer mortality and seek advice when something is not right. Projects our Social Action Leads have worked with include art, fitness, cooking, laughter and singing workshops, outdoor activities, community theatre, and ambassador programmes, through to beauty and hairdressing students. The common denominator is local people, being given useful health information by other local people that they know and trust.”
This video gives an overview of the Community Partnerships programme at Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance, in the words of our Social Action Leads and just a few of the many grassroots community organisations worked with.
Find out more about Cheshire and Merseyside Cancer Alliance & the resources they have available
