RIC Health Messaging Campaign 2: Cervical Screening/ cancer and HPV Awareness — Small Grants Funding 2021 Additional Information

RIC — Reducing Inequalities in Communities

Reduc­ing Inequal­i­ties in Com­mu­ni­ties (RIC)

Community Partnerships

Com­mu­ni­ty Partnerships

Why is this health messaging campaign needed?

The table below is tak­en from Pub­lic Health Eng­land’s Fin­ger­tips data­base which records uptake of cer­vi­cal screen­ing across the coun­try, the table you can see below shows how Brad­ford com­pares with oth­er areas across the York­shire and Hum­ber area. Brad­ford has the low­est uptake counts across the York­shire and Hum­ber area, and the York­shire and Hum­ber area as a whole has some of the low­est uptake  in the country.

Indi­ca­tor	Peri­od		Eng­land	York­shire and the Hum­ber region
Can­cer screen­ing cov­er­age — cer­vi­cal can­cer (aged 25 to 49 years old)	2020		70.2*	73.0*
Can­cer screen­ing cov­er­age — cer­vi­cal can­cer (aged 50 to 64 years old)	2020		76.1*	77.7*

Barns­ley	Brad­ford	Calderdale	Don­cast­er	East Rid­ing of York­shire	Kingston upon Hull	Kirklees	Leeds	North East Lin­colnshire	North Lin­colnshire	North York­shire	Rother­ham	Sheffield	Wake­field	York		Peri­od
76.0	67.0	74.5	73.4	79.0	71.8	73.0	70.9	75.8	74.1	78.5*	76.4	71.2	74.8	68.6		2020
78.4	76.1	78.8	76.2	79.4	74.8	79.6	77.1	77.4	77.5	79.4*	78.3	77.0	77.4	75.6		2020

This infor­ma­tion is tak­en from the FINGERTIPS database.

Some of the reasons why uptake of cervical screening is comparatively low

• Myths and mis­con­cep­tion - some peo­ple believe that only women and peo­ple with a cervix need a cer­vi­cal screen­ing because they are promiscuous
• Fear of the process — many peo­ple do not under­stand what a cer­vi­cal screen­ing entails and have under­stand­able fears 
• Lan­guage bar­ri­ers - some of the words com­mon­ly used in cer­vi­cal screen­ing and oth­er clin­i­cal sit­u­a­tions have no direct trans­la­tion into some lan­guages, this can lead to mis­un­der­stand­ings and confusion
• Can­cer - some peo­ple may believe that rather than being pre­ven­ta­tive, being invit­ed for a cer­vi­cal screen­ing means you have cer­vi­cal cancer
• Bar­ri­ers such as visual/ hear­ing impair­ment, Learn­ing dis­abil­i­ties etc

Why HPV?

Most cer­vi­cal can­cers are linked to HPV infec­tions whilst young, stud­ies show that HPV accounts for over 70% of cer­vi­cal can­cers. In 2008 the HPV vac­cine was intro­duced for girls aged 12–13 in year 8 of school, and more lat­ter­ly for boys. A study that was con­clud­ed in 2021 shows that of the first cohort of chil­dren to receive the HPV vac­ci­na­tion it has cut the instances of cer­vi­cal can­cers by 90%.

Dur­ing the COVID pan­dem­ic schools and health ser­vices have been under huge pres­sure to car­ry out COVID test­ing and HPV vac­ci­na­tion has dropped as a result. Also there are con­cerns around the vac­cine hes­i­tan­cy asso­ci­at­ed with the COVID vac­cine and what impact this might have on par­ents allow­ing chil­dren to have the HPV vaccine.

KPI’s and Outcomes

The­ses are the KPI’s and Out­comes that projects will be asked to report against. 

Out­come 1. Cer­vi­cal Screen­ing spe­cif­ic: 20% of par­tic­i­pants will have shown a pos­i­tive increase in rela­tion to the 3 out­lined KPI’s for cer­vi­cal screening.

KPI 1. (Soft) — Total num­ber of peo­ple report­ing they have a bet­ter under­stand­ing of cer­vi­cal can­cer and how/ why it devel­ops KPI 2. (Hard) — Total num­ber of peo­ple report­ing they will pos­i­tive­ly respond to a cer­vi­cal screen­ing invi­ta­tion as a result of their par­tic­i­pa­tion KPI 3. (Hard) — Total num­ber of peo­ple report­ing they are more like­ly to attend a cer­vi­cal screen­ing as a result of the project

Out­come 2. HPV spe­cif­ic: Projects will report a more a 20% increase in pos­i­tive per­cep­tion of HPV vac­cines among par­tic­i­pants and will­ing­ness to have the vaccine

KPI 1. (Hard) — Total num­ber of par­ents report­ing they are more like­ly to allow their child to receive the HPV vac­cine as a result of the project KPI 2. (Hard) — Total num­ber of chil­dren and/ or young adults report­ing they are more like­ly to have the HPV vac­cine as a result of the project

Soft Out­come 1: All projects will nom­i­nate a lead work­er who will attend and com­plete manda­to­ry training

Other Support

The West York­shire and Har­ro­gate Can­cer Alliance  (deliv­ery part­ner) https://canceralliance.wyhpartnership.co.uk/

• WYHCA have offered sup­port, guid­ance and some resources to suc­cess­ful organ­i­sa­tions. We would encour­age you to con­tact them at the start of your project to see what might be available.

Jo’s Cer­vi­cal Can­cer Trust: https://www.jostrust.org.uk/

• Jo’s is wide­ly recog­nised as the UK’s lead­ing cer­vi­cal can­cer char­i­ty, they have free resources about cer­vi­cal screen­ing, cer­vi­cal can­cer and HPV as well as being the lead organ­i­sa­tion for Cer­vi­cal Screen­ing Aware­ness Week. Please take advan­tage of their exper­tise and knowl­edge around these health issues. If you think you would like to organ­ise an offi­cial event for Cer­vi­cal Screen­ing Aware­ness Week please vis­it this link: https://www.jostrust.org.uk/get-involved/campaign/cervical-cancer-prevention-week

Pub­lic Health Eng­land: https://campaignresources.phe.gov.uk/resources/campaigns/85-cervical-screening-campaign/resources

• PHE pro­duces resources for cer­vi­cal screen­ing aware­ness cam­paigns. You are required to reg­is­ter and there may be a cost to some of the resources.

Downloads you will need.

Necessary Downloads – These downloads are a necessary part of your project, please make sure you download and save. You will be asked to report on these Outcomes and KPI’s, you will also be asked to return on completion.

https://usercontent.one/wp/www.thevcsalliance.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Campaign-2-Monitoring-Project-Reporting‑Sheet-Final.xlsx

Questionnaire

This is the ques­tion­naire you will be asked to deliv­er to each par­tic­i­pant 3 times dur­ing the project. We would pre­fer sur­veys to be com­plet­ed through Sur­vey­Mon­key where pos­si­ble but under­stand that may not always be pos­si­ble. Please find below the link to the Sur­vey­Mon­key form and a PDF ver­sion for download.

https://www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/Health-Messaging-Campaign2-HPV-Questionnaire

Down­load Health Mes­sag­ing Cam­paign 2 Ques­tion­naire as a PDF here