By Lynn Swinburne, Senior Health Promotion Officer, National Screening Service
We’ve completed a five-year project to develop accessible information about our four screening programmes – BowelScreen, BreastCheck, CervicalCheck and Diabetic RetinaScreen. We worked with Disabled people, disability organisations, advocates, screening participants and people with unmet literacy needs to co-design this information, including easy-to-read and plain English resources, and photo stories.
Why we did the project
- It’s part of our work to improve health literacy about screening. Research shows that 4 in 10 people find it difficult to understand and use information to make decisions about their health. Our accessible information aims to increase a person’s ability to understand information about screening.
- It’s our response to an identified need from our screening participants. We have access officers for each of our screening programmes who provide help to people who have access needs and who need support before, during and after their screening. Some people ask us to send them easy-to-read or picture-based information to help them to understand more about screening and their appointment.
- It’s part of our work to improve equity in screening. Understanding and improving equity is a key priority for us in our 5-year strategy, Choose Screening.
- It's part of our responsibility as a public health service, under the Disability Act 2005, to make our services accessible to Disabled people. We work to ensure that the information we publish is made available to Disabled people in clear language that is easily understood.
What we did
We developed a suite of easy-to-read resources for our four screening programmes to show people what they can expect when they come for screening. The resources cover all parts of the screening journey including information about:
- the benefits and harms of screening
- giving consent for screening
- going for your screening tests
- going for more tests after screening
- how we look after your information.
Our screening participants asked us to use realistic photographs and images in the resources - real people from their community going for screening in a real setting - representing screening in a way that is accurate and true to life. They told us this is useful for people who like to visualise what the screening service is like, and the steps involved.
How we did it
We worked in partnership with our screening participants, Disabled people, disability organisations, advocates, and people with unmet literacy needs to co-design the resources.
We developed and user-tested the resources with our screening participants. We took all our own photography using community volunteers and screening participants. We listened to what had meaning for people and what they wanted to know before coming for screening.
One screening participant who user tested our CervicalCheck materials told us that "this story is exactly what happened to me when I went for the test. I would have loved to have this before I went, and I wouldn't have been so scared. I think it is great that I am asked to help with this and then I am helping other women to understand this test better. It is important to teach people so they are not anxious... show them it is nothing to worry about and we should all do it.”
The final project outcome is a mix of easy-to-read, plain English, photo story and video resources that aim to improve health literacy to support people to choose screening. The resources will also benefit carers and healthcare professionals to prepare people who want to go for screening, who need help with informed consent, and to reduce the anxiety that some people may have when taking part in screening.
View or download our accessible information resources: