Jim Shannon – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Department of Health
The below Parliamentary question was asked by Jim Shannon on 2015-11-09.
To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what steps he is taking to promote his Department’s strategies to prevent cancer.
Jane Ellison
One of the independent Cancer Taskforce report’s six strategic priorities is to “spearhead a radical upgrade in prevention and public health”. NHS England is currently working with partners across the health system to determine how best to take forward the recommendations of the report.
As part of putting in place a governance structure for delivery of the strategy, NHS England has appointed Cally Palmer as NHS National Cancer Director. She will lead the implementation of the strategy, as well as new cancer vanguards using outcomes-based commissioning to redesign care and patient experience. Ms Palmer is Chief Executive of the Royal Marsden Hospital.
Public Health England (PHE) runs a number of successful campaigns relating to cancer prevention.
The tobacco marketing programme runs a range of activity to highlight the health harms of smoking. This includes demonstrating the link between smoking and cancer, as well as encouraging smokers to make quit attempts and signposting them to proven NHS tools and services to help. These programmes have been shown to have a positive impact on reducing adult smoking prevalence.
PHE’s flagship social marketing campaign, Change4Life, aims to help families and children in England to eat well, move more, and live longer. Some cancers are highlighted as a health consequence within the campaign messaging. The campaign has enjoyed considerable success and unparalleled levels of engagement. Since its launch in 2009, more than 2.7 million people have signed up to Change4Life and it now has more than 200 national partners. Its tools and resources incentivise and encourage behaviour change.
These complement the Be Clear on Cancer campaigns (BCoC) that encourage symptom recognition and earlier general practitioner presentation. BCoC campaigns have been running since early 2011 and have covered a number of cancers nationally and regionally.
