Stoke Cancer Awareness Programme

Local people have volunteered to act as Community Reps sharing the message ‘Get Checked Today to Enjoy Tomorrow’ in their Communities.

At the Co-design event, some of the Community Reps suggested that it would be helpful to have a Community Toolkit to help spread the word.

The toolkits were delivered today and they contain the following:

Comments Cards – to allow reps or people they speak to feedback ideas and suggestions

Ideas to Share – inspiration on creative ways to share the information

Excuse Buster – helps reps respond to excuses that people give for not getting symptoms checked

GP practice information – contact details and opening times of local practices

‘I’m Cancer Aware’ stickers – promotional stickers to hand out at events

Posters, leaflets and flyers – to hand out and distribute

We are looking forward to having a go at using the kits.

We have been very busy going through all the feedback from the community toolkits. We had a total of 23 feedback forms which is a fantastic addition to the research going on Stoke.

The community volunteer who conducted the most interviews was Gill Jones who conducted 8 interviews. A big thank you in the form of a £25 M&S voucher is on its way to you. THANK YOU also to everyone who was involved.

We are currently working hard to process and present all the information, but the main areas that we have identified from your feedback so far are:

1. The main resource people use to gain health information is PEOPLE. Some respondents gained information from friends, others family, and some colleagues or professionals. This is good news for the project as the approach we are taking is harnessing the power of COMMUNITIES and PEOPLE.

2. Respondents were more aware of the signs and symptoms of breast cancer than lung cancer. The symptoms of lung cancer that most people said they would not visit the doctor with were: feeling more tired than normal, feeling out of breath, and losing their voice without a sore throat.

3.People identified some of the barriers to visiting their doctor. These included:

• being a nuisance
• wasting time
• difficulty making appointments
• feeling like a statistic and not a person.

We are busy transferring all the information into pretty diagrams and will upload these soon.

There is a large pile of blue envelops at the office. This is all the feedback from the community volunteers. We are so pleased with the amount of interviews people have been doing. We are getting back some very useful and interesting information so THANK YOU to all the community volunteers.

We are processing this information and will post up highlights ASAP.

In case you are wondering who has carried out the most interviews so far, here are the numbers. Remember there is a £25 M&S voucher as a thank you for the volunteer who carries out the most interviews.

(NB: Volunteers have been given numbers such asBurslem 1 to protect privacy)

Longton 18 x 6

Norton and Bradeley 4 x 1

Longton 12 x 8

Burslem 4 x 1

Longton 19 x

Unknown sender x 2

There is still time to get your feedback in so if you have got any Q&A forms outstanding then pop them in the post.