Health promotion

Masses! Absolutely masses. Health awareness and charities….. Tch. It’s all gone to nonsense, hasn’t it? There are so many Days/Weeks/Months the concept is just silly, offering little of actual use to the audience. Many are only done because it’s ‘what you do’ in broad-brush healthee charidee way.

This post combines my interest in cancer awareness with my concerns about the absence of the elderly from most cancer charities’ agendas. I suggest two things. That 1) the single issue cancer charity sector should cast a properly self-critical eye on their role in ‘cancer awareness’ and 2) that it is now obvious that there is such a thing as the wrong kind of cancer patient - and that’s an old one.

This should be subtitled 'a case study in how to generate health news in a lazy media, whilst not actually putting a great deal of effort in yourself, either.' 

Cancer Research UK have been at it again, with another piffling survey of the UK public and their seemingly impenetrable ‘ignorance’. Do stop!

I was at an interesting but somewhat passionless National Cancer Equalities Initiative (NCEI) event on 12 March, on oncology decision making in older age. It wasn’t a particularly revelatory set of results – the researchers showed ageist clinical decision making, by oncologists and haematologists.

Who'd have thought it?

I found the following on The Prostate Cancer Charity website, about a party marking the current Awareness Month. I’ve lifted it as posted, and added my own comments.

It is the usual muddle of half baked wishful thinking which manages to imply certainty and health advice, without actually containing any of either. You'll learn about their celebrity supporters and the fundraising, but any actual facts about prostate cancer come courtesy of me! 

… this follows on from the previous post and should be read with an exasperated and another thing tone to your internal voice. To re-cap – the breast cancer lobby was advanced by Radio Four’s Women’s Hour as a great model for other health lobbies to copy….in particular, the prostate cancer one.

Aha! Another mildly daft poll, about the daft British public, women in this case, and their erroneous beliefs on cancer risk, in women. This one is a bread and butter error, arising from the cumulative effect of all dopey, disconnected cancer awareness everywhere. Once more, gender specific cancers are thought of as being a greater problem for a gender (in this case women) than non-gender specific cancers are.

Today (26 Oct. 2011) is not the day to be working for a breast cancer charity. Staff will be drafting Press Releases and copy for the websites, the phones will be ringing off the hook, some callers will be distressed, others angry, the press will be pressing and at the back of the staff’s mind will be the uncertainty.

This month is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. (BCAM) Deep sigh. This is the annual high point of my cancer awareness scepticism, stimulated by breast cancer charities and their crappy business model that muddles awareness for health, with their brand recognition and market share. See legions of my previous posts….

Yesterday (Thursday 1 September) I read this piece on the Channel 4 news website. It's about a paper in the Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine which apparently says says the risks of breast cancer over diagnosis are ‘not made clear’. Ears pricked up.