What do people in Stoke think about breast and lung cancer?
The Healthy Communities Collaborative teams have been nominated and short listed for this years NHS Stoke on Trent “Getting across the message” award. The team will find out on Tuesday if they have won the award for the creative and effective ways they have been getting the cancer message out in the local areas . Well done to all the teams for getting this far and fingers crossed you win!
Local pharmacists have been offered the chance to attend a cancer awareness session in Stoke on Trent. The training session took place at the end of June and over 30 pharmacists attended. Speakers included the breast, bowel and lung cancer specialists. It is hoped that the local pharmacists will be willing to support the HCC programme in Burslem, Longton and Norton and Bradeley areas.
The posters and leaflets for the HCC have been printed and will be put up by the community teams over the next few weeks
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.
The Stoke Cancer Awareness project is about harnessing the value of local people and local knowledge.
We are also using this approach in the production of campaign materials. We have 3 local stars who were diagnosed and successfully treated for cancer. These local stars will be appearing in all the marketing communications. We hope that by sharing their stories and experiences they can bring to life our campaign message:
Get Checked Today to Enjoy Tomorrow
Yesterday we photographed the stars getting on with and enjoying their lives in and around Stoke. We photographed Karen, who was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2007 whizzing around in her convertible, we photographed Isobel who was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2004 enjoying her beautiful garden with her husband James and dog Tyson. Jeff, who was diagnosed with lung cancer was photographed enjoying afternoon tea with his wife Margaret and friend Derick.
Stars posed infront of famous Stoke landmarks. Karen was photograhped in front of Josiah Wedgewood.
Pictures from the photoshoot are coming soon.
A range of prototype materials have been developed with the aim to promote earlier presentation of cancer symptoms. These prototypes were tested in a range of locations including Michelin Tyres, Portmeirion Potteries, Bradeley Village retirement home, and Longton Market Cafe. The materials were also presented to the Community Volunteers and Health Professionals to gather feedback and ideas.
The key objective for testing the prototypes was to gauge likeability, understanding, relevance and potential impact.
We spoke to 58 people in Stoke over 2 days which proved very useful for the development of the material. Lots of areas for improvement were highlighted, along with what is working well.
We are currently making tweaks and changes to the prototypes before we test again.
Today was the Healthy Communities Collaborative Discover Event at the Civic Centre in Stoke. The event was organised to share the context, rationale and vision of the programme in Stoke and to allow everyone involved to meet with one another.
There was a great turnout with over 70 attendees and a fantastic agenda that looked at both the national and local picture.
The Community Teams seized the opportunity to test out some of their innovative and fun ways of raising awareness of the signs and symptoms of cancer and I think everyone would agree that these were the highlight of the day:
Playing pass the parcel
We are all really excited about the next stages of the project which will involve developing and testing methods of raising awareness and improving services.
Last week we held a co-design event to bring together people involved in the project to generate ideas for next steps.
There was a great and varied turnout and we had a productive day coming up with ideas on how to raise awareness on lung and breast cancer.
Here are a few images from the event.
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:
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.
