By Lynn Swinburne, Equity Manager, National Screening Service
We deliver a training programme and provide resources to community health workers to help them support people to take part in screening. Community champions play a vital role in improving equity in screening.
After the success of our 2024 pilot project and evaluation, we expanded our work in 2025 to train new champions, build new partnerships, and provide ongoing support to champions trained in 2024.
New partnerships – new champions
In 2025, we trained 54 new community champions.
We partnered with two new groups:
- Roma health network
- Dublin North City and County.
With their outreach and community links, these groups are helping more people to access, understand and take part in screening.
Roma health network
We collaborated with the Roma health network, a quarterly national forum led by the HSE’s National Social Inclusion Office. The network brings together regional HSE teams, Roma support projects and Roma community members from across Ireland to address inequalities.
This partnership allowed us to:
- build regional contacts in Roma health
- train Roma helpline staff and Roma outreach workers
- learn more about Roma culture and specific health needs.
Newly trained Roma champions are now active within their communities, supporting people to:
- understand what screening involves
- register for screening
- attend appointments
- overcome cultural and practical barriers.
This collaborative outreach is helping to make screening information more accessible and relevant to Roma people across Ireland.
We also worked with Cairde to upskill Roma peer support workers.
This training helped peer support workers to:
- understand Ireland’s four national screening programmes
- tell us how best to adapt information for Roma communities
- ensure screening messages are culturally accurate and meet literacy needs.
What Roma champions told us
“With Roma women it will be a slow process to take up the screenings offered, but with regular, consistent open conversations, opinions will change to focus on preventive care rather than reactionary.”
“Different cultural groups have different reasons for not engaging with screening programmes. This will take time to change and information will need to be given a few times.”
Dublin North City and County
Our second new group of champions came from Dublin North city and county. In total, 21 champions were trained. The mix of skills and experience in the group enhanced the training and created strong peer learning. The group included social prescribers, community connectors and health promotion and improvement officers.
What our 2025 champions told us
People told us that the training helped them to:
- share information one-to-one and explore screening needs with community members
- talk confidently about screening and support people to take part
- bring screening knowledge back to colleagues in local networks
- plan future initiatives to help people register and understand screening
- run group sessions in their communities to promote screening
- develop new ideas for improving access and reducing barriers.
Supporting our 2024 champions
We remain committed to providing ongoing support to all our community champions. Our focus is to respond to feedback from champions, continue to build confidence and make sure people feel supported in their role.
In 2025, we delivered a webinar for our trained champions from the pilot project in 2024 in response to their recommendations from the evaluation of the project.
The webinar included:
- an external speaker from community cancer support
- guidance on supporting people who may need further tests or who get a cancer diagnosis
- information on self-care for champions working in emotionally demanding roles.
Looking ahead to 2026
The work of our expanding network of champions continues to inspire us.
Already, new champions are:
- developing community-led initiatives
- increasing screening registration
- helping people attend appointments
- strengthening links between communities and screening programmes.
In 2026, we will continue to:
- offer workshops to keep our champions updated
- support shared learning
- listen and respond to feedback from champions
- explore new possibilities for community-led interventions.
We look forward to continuing to work with all our community champions. Their outreach and local knowledge are invaluable in understanding the barriers people face and how best to support them to take part in screening.
Together, we are building a stronger, more equitable screening service - one that meets people where they are and supports everyone to take part.
- To find out more about our work to improve equity in screening visit hse.ie/equityinscreening
- To get involved, email equity@screeningservice.ie