We’re delighted to announce that we have partnered with the patient engagement service Appt Health, to advance our work on improving cancer screening uptake across south east London.
The project will take a behavioural approach to encourage people from underserved groups and high-risk populations, where uptake is lower, to attend cervical screening.
Appt Health’s platform combines behavioural science, patient engagement and inclusive co-design to better engage patients who are often missed by traditional approaches, such as an invite letter in the post.
Our aim is to design better, patient-centred invitation strategies that are more effective for our target populations in south east London and will ensure more people have equal access to life-saving cancer screening services and are diagnosed earlier.
Appt Health will also be working with the Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London and Prova Health to carry out a comprehensive impact evaluation that will generate scalable insights that can support national screening programmes.
Smitha Nathan, Deputy Managing Director at the South East London Cancer Alliance, said: “We understand it can be difficult to attend a cancer screening appointment for a variety of reasons including work and family commitments, fear or embarrassment, and misinformation surrounding the test. But these tests are vital as they can prevent cancer.
“It’s fantastic that we’ve partnered with Appt Health to reach and engage with as many of our residents as possible. We hope this project will make it easier for more people to access the screening services they need to stay well and to be treated early if there are any problems. This project is part of South East London’s cervical cancer elimination ambition, which supports the national strategy; through targeted uptake interventions and improvements to the programme we can eliminate cervical cancer by 2040."
This partnership project has been commissioned and funded by the NHS Cancer Programme with the support of the SBRI Healthcare and the NHS Accelerated Access Collaborative.