We recently delivered a training workshop with a team of 30 community cancer nurses, cancer prevention officers, cancer support nurses and other representatives from the Marie Keating Foundation, the Irish Cancer Society, the HSE National Cancer Control Programme and Breakthrough Cancer Research.
Organised by our health promotion team, the workshop provided an opportunity to update attendees about three of our population-based screening programmes - BowelScreen, BreastCheck and CervicalCheck, the benefits and limitations of screening, and about Ireland’s roadmap to Cervical Cancer Elimination.
Potential changes to our screening programmes were presented, including widening the age range eligibility of our BowelScreen and BreastCheck programmes, and exploring the addition of a self-sampling HPV test to the CervicalCheck programme.
The interactive workshop offered plenty of opportunity for questions and there was great engagement from all in attendance. Some of the questions included:
- why BreastCheck does not screen women aged 70 and over
- why CervicalCheck changed the number of years between screening
- if we have screening information available in different languages.
The challenges of communicating about screening were discussed, including:
- the importance of having up-to-date contact information on our registers so that people can get their invitation and results letters
- how to communicate with people who are homeless or with no fixed address
- how to communicate changes to screening programmes and ensure all our stakeholders have the most up-to-date information to provide to people eligible for screening.
We work to improve equity in screening and our health promotion team presented how we put this into practice by providing an overview of some of our equity projects, including:
- implementing the recommendations of our research to examine the perspectives and experiences of Disabled people in accessing screening services
- our partnership project with Pavee Point and the HSE National Cancer Control Programme to better understand the health needs and barriers of the community by addressing cancer prevention, early detection and screening with the Traveller population
- our work developing accessible information about our four screening programmes including easy-to-read and plain English resources, and photo stories.
- implementing the findings of our research to examine the knowledge, attitudes, perceptions and experiences of LGBT+ people in cervical screening in Ireland
- our community champions health promotion project to build the capacity of community health workers to provide practical information and support about screening in their communities.
Presenters on the day were Dr Laura Heavey, Consultant in Public Health Medicine, our screening programme managers - Suzanne Lynch (BreastCheck), Hilary Coffey Farrell (BowelScreen) and Gráinne Gleeson (CervicalCheck), and senior health promotion officers, Aoife Collins, Kathryn Meade and Lynn Swinburne.