Cancer awareness campaign

Support to reach women with English as a second language, to raise awareness of cancer screening and wellbeing opportunities.

Benefit of health promotion

Health promotion supports personal and social development and enables people to take more control over their own health. Providing information and screening are some examples of health promotion. Giving people access to relevant and accurate health information puts them in a better position to make healthier choices for prevention and self-management of conditions. Qualitative data shows that opportunistic and community-based screening opportunities can reach people who would not have accessed screening otherwise.

Location

Burnage, and Cheetham Hill

Project team

List project team and partners involved.

Macmillan Cancer Support

Burnage Buddies

Kihzra Mosque

Burnage Talk English Group

Burnage Community Centre

Aim

Macmillan Cancer Support, were hosting outreach sessions for women who’s uptake of cancer screening opportunities is very low. Macmillan asked for Buzz to become involved, and we were able to pay Muneeba Hussain, who has worked as a Health and food worker, and speaks Urdu, to deliver three sessions to Urdu speaking groups around food, wellbeing and fasting.

The aim of the sessions was to support women who do not access services, to gain more information about the benefits of screening, and wellbeing strategies. We were able to improve access through Muneeba, and has extensive experience of group work around the subject of health and wellbeing.

“It was really useful. We were able to ask questions of someone we knew understood our culture and language. Muneeba got a really good discussion going.”

Evaluation

The project reached women who tend not to access screening services, and are often excluded from such services by language and cultural barriers. Employing a worker who spoke Urdu, enabled the women to speak freely, and discuss issues which they would not attempt with someone who did not share their language and culture.

Links to local/national policies

Benefit	Policy
Empowers people	Healthy Lives, Healthy People (HM Government, 2010) NHS Five Year Forward View (Department of Health, 2014)
Supports prevention	Greater Manchester Mental Health and Wellbeing Strategy The Manchester Prevention Programme
Supports self-care and self-management of conditions	Make Every Contact Count (Future Forum, Department of Health, 2011) Taking Charge of our Health and Social Care in Greater Manchester (GMCA, 2015) Manchester’s Self-Care Strategy
Increases participation for groups who would not usually access	Fair Society, Healthy Lives (Institute of Health Equity, 2010)