NAEDI

Today 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.

Yesterday, the BBC news website presented a bowel cancer awareness story, originated by Cancer Research UK, entitled ‘Bowel cancer awareness stubbornly low’. Their tone was a tad patronising - the BBC’s, not CR-UK’s – using the phrase ‘stubbornly low’. ‘Stubborn’ as in ‘asses’, I suppose. Ah yes! The stupid British public.

And here's more - on the CR-UK poll on fear and cancer mentioned in the similarly title post just below, numbered 1.

This time CR-UK's Poll missed out the options for us British to be frightened of terrorism, car accidents, murder and plane crashes - alternatives used previously in these ‘Top of the Shocks’ polls. Instead, they stuck a possibly random selection of cancers into the mix - breast, bowel, lung, prostate, malignant melanoma, cervical, ovarian, pancreatic, oesophageal, leukaemia, brain, and testicular.

As usual, I was listening to the Today programme, on Radio Four this morning and Catherine was on. Catherine Foot works at the King's Fund. James Naughtie was interviewing her and for the first time I can recall, there was a major cancer story that actually mentions older people with cancer.

And if they think it, would they ever spell it out it? I suspect not. How would they know when to stop? I’m not sure they would be at ease implying some cancers are not worth being aware of, and I’m sure they wouldn’t name them explicitly.

Here we go again. I recently wrote a blog entry that included a reference to a dotty Cancer Research UK survey from 2007 that I’d found on their website. I should never have mentioned it as I’ve clearly reminded them about it.

…..except that I doubt NAEDI and the Department of Health think they are ‘versus’ the cancer charities. And as you will find out, I think there should be a bit of ‘v’ in there.

The National Cancer Survivorship Initiative is rumbling along, part of the Cancer Reform Strategy, the policy prism through which light from the Department of Health and the serried ranks of voluntary sector cancer charities shines on cancer care.

The initiative exists to improve life with and beyond cancer for all survivors. But are the complexities of survivorship approached equally, as they should be, for all men with prostate cancer?

I’m not sure, I’m really, really not sure that they are.

The National Awareness and Early Detection Initiative and the National Cancer Survivorship Initiatives are key concepts in the Cancer Reform Strategy, the mainstay of current health policy for cancer. All singing, all dancing. Hugely important. But not 'all new'.

The baseline report on the Cancer Awareness Measure was published by the Department of Health in November last year and gives the results from two national surveys using the CR-UK Cancer Awareness Measure (CAM). The CAM was developed as part of the National Awareness and Early Diagnosis Initiative (NAEDI) to implement the Cancer Reform Strategy.