Health Service Focus

The whole picture

Sara Osbourne, head of policy at Cancer Research UK, talks to NHE about a new way of looking at cancer statistics.

While cancer is a disease common to all areas of the UK, there is significant variation in both incidence and the NHS’s response. Bringing data together from different sources would allow greater comparison, as well as facilitate the spread of best practice – so Cancer Research UK built a website that did just that.

Speaking about the amount of research the charity had access to, head of policy Sara Osbourne told NHE: “We increasingly felt that we had a responsibility to share it as widely as we could.

“Particularly bearing in mind MPs and researcher’s interests relating to their local communities, with some of the decision making on public health sitting with clinical commissioning groups and local authorities, we felt this would be of benefit to allow people to look at the information which relates specifically to their areas.”

Compare and contrast

The website allows commissioners, patients, or councillors to compare their area with other parts of the country and with the national average. Osbourne said: “Hopefully you would start to think why those differences exist.”

The data, now easily accessible to all, could encourage consideration around improvements for cancer care and health inequalities more generally.

One example could be boosting the number of people accepting invitations for screening, by running public awareness campaigns and follow-up campaigns to make sure they’re targeting the right people.

“It gives people some kind of clue about the interventions they might want to make at a local level – we’re hoping it will promote that sort of debate and discussion.”

Local areas can now identify good practice more easily, which could lead to further engagement with peers and colleagues in other departments and trusts.

Patient participation

Greater transparency for patients is also important, as it offers a way for them to enter conversations about which services to commission, or where to put the emphasis on local services.

This could be key to achieving the NHS ambition of ‘no decision about me, without me’ – providing real engagement with service users.

Osbourne said this also offered opportunities for improving public health, by clearly linking lifestyle factors and types of cancer: “There are a number of things you can do about your own situation to take action to reduce your risk of getting cancer in the first place.”

Fit for purpose

Cancer Research UK will update the website as new statistics become available, to ensure it remains relevant and accurate. Osbourne said they were keen to collect feedback to determine how to improve the resource.

“We need to look at what data is available and how we can best present that. We’ll be looking at what additional data we want to include, or information we find is not helpful.

“We’d change and reflect the way we develop it, to ensure it remains fit for purpose.”

She added: “Certainly for people working in public health, none of this is information they don’t already have; we’ve just presented it in a slightly different way.

“If you’re looking at public health more generally – the wider determinants of health, deprivation indexes, the age of the population, things like employment rates, housing conditions – those wider factors, this will just add another layer for people and allow you to look at the whole picture.”