What is the challenge your project is going to address and how does it connect to the theme of 'How can improvement be used to reduce delays accessing health and care services'?

We will be using this in addition to our already established project, which is working within the Core 20 plus 5 strategic priority. This project is based on early cancer diagnosis, specifically focused on bowel cancer. Social Enterprise Kent and Kent and Medway Cancer Alliance are working together to reduce Health Inequalities across Thanet and the South Kent Coast. The latest statistics show there are 1,368 cases of bowel cancer in Kent and Medway.

We want to create a variety of completely accessible videos for anyone to access, breaking down the barriers we have identified across the duration of the project.

We know that screening offers a pathway for early diagnosis in cervical, bowel, and breast cancer.  In this project by concentrating on bowel cancer screening, we are hoping to improve screening uptake in vulnerable groups and enable more people to be diagnosed at an earlier stage of their cancer.

What does your project aim to achieve?

To increase the uptake of bowel cancer screening. We want to break into ‘seldom heard’ communities, who are historically less likely to engage with health care professionals. By creating engaging and accessible learning materials, we hope to reach as many people as possible, from all walks of life, to encourage routine screening for those in the eligible age brackets and awareness of bowel cancer signs and symptoms for those outside the bracket – so they feel empowered to ask for further screening if they notice any of the symptoms.  This will ultimately feed into a higher rate of early diagnosis allowing more people to have better outcomes from their cancer diagnosis.

We aim to understand and address some of the practical barriers in this process for the community and be innovative at meeting the needs of the community through engagement activities, using signers and interpreters, and micro-funding for community providers.

How will the project be delivered?

This will be delivered by hiring a professional company to film a variety of videos that detail the following:

• What is bowel cancer?
• What are the signs and symptoms?
• What is a screening test and how do you complete one?
• Who is eligible / How do I get a screening test?
• Where can I go for further support?

We hope to deliver tailored videos in the language formats most commonly used where English is a second language according to census data for our coastal towns – Polish, Romanian and Nepalese. We would also like videos that use  BSL and  Makaton.

We will recruit Community Connectors at our pop-up awareness and information events in collaboration with community leaders and empower them through the relevant training. We aim to increase their confidence in making connections within their community to break down barriers, increase conversations and raise awareness of bowel cancer and screening.

How is your project going to share learning?

We will share our videos far and wide for anyone to use, we will share to all our stakeholders within the NHS Integrated Care System and Kent and Medway Cancer Alliance as well as primary care GP practices.   We will also share the videos with other community groups as well as local councils and libraries. We also would like to use the videos on our social media channels and utilise our established links with Bowel Cancer UK.

We will work in partnership with cancer screening colleagues and/or a health provider as part of this engagement process with the target community. We will share iterative learning through the Regional Screening and Immunisation Team, the Early Diagnosis Team, Kent and Medway Cancer Alliance, and the Specialist Screening Practitioners. We hope to have the opportunity to bring our work to the Early Diagnosis Working Group and the Health Inequalities sub-group of the ICS.