NAEDI and the Department of Health versus the cancer charities

NAEDI –The National Awareness and Early Detection Initiative - is an important and wholly appropriate activity under the Cancer Reform Strategy (NB as long as they do some work, somewhere along the line, to target men and women aged over 75, at greatest risk of cancer but with changeable multiple co-morbidities, out of which to pick possible cancer symptoms. I wonder if any single issue cancer charity is pushing this...?). The DoH facilitates NAEDI and cancer charities advise on it.

 

Regular readers (as if there are any…tsk..) will have gathered that I question the value of single issue cancer charities in raising awareness of cancer. There are two key reasons. First is the conflict of interest – never acknowledged - between delivering accurate, complete and contextualised health promotion to ‘at risk’ groups on the one hand, and the charities’ need to profile ‘their’ cancer alone, out of any context with other possible cancers or health issues in order to fundraise, on the other.

 

The second key reason is the unwieldy and detailed one-at-a-time please agenda for each tumour. Single issue charities, being self absorbed, don’t notice but the audience lands up with all the contributions from each single issue cancer charity flung at them, apparently randomly. I’m supposed to ‘know’ breast, lung, bowel, ovarian, uterine, pancreatic etc. cancers. Then there's all the other stuff - diabetes, heart disease, heart attack, stroke, etc. etc. It is far too big an agenda to be of  practical use to the as yet unaffected members of the public. Luckily, I’m a nurse with a medical PhD. Pity the other buggers.

 

NAEDI as remarked earlier, is supported, as one would expect, by expert advisors. Good. Or is it?

 

Many of the experts advisors on awareness are the charities whose services are, by and large, for people who already have a cancer. That’s not the as yet unaffected public who are the real audience for cancer awareness.  However, the as yet unaffected public are fair game for fundraisers, so they don’t enjoy quite the same status and respect as someone already diagnosed.  I suggest single issue cancer charities’ endeavours in awareness are driven at worst mostly by self interest, at best equally by self interest.

 

I’d prefer the driver in cancer awareness to be balanced high quality health promotion.

 

Where’s the transparency and accountability in cancer awareness from single issue cancer charities? Cancer awareness should be about providing relevant and reliable information in a timely manner, free from bias, comparable, understandable and focused on the audiences’ needs. That sentence is a slightly edited quote on the meaning of accountability and transparency from the Charity Commission website…..

 

The constituency of the single issue cancer charities is primarily people who already have their cancer. Those charities most particularly cannot take a take a balanced or pragmatic view of all-cancer awareness. Their users don’t expect it.

 

So what advice can the single issue cancer charities give NAEDI, given their experience in honing and promoting messages only about themselves? Could NAEDI be facilitating fundraising rather more than awareness by engaging with cancer charities? If it is, does it know? Or mind?

 

Would NAEDI consider initiatives targeting population groups by age and gender, rather than by cancer? It’d be pretty efficient…. but maybe the single issue charities wouldn’t like it…. but the as yet unaffected general public might….

 

The single most useful observation for general cancer awareness comes from CR-UK – and I have to say ‘unexpectedly’. They are an organisation for scientists and science who state “We are the world’s leading charity dedicated to beating cancer through research”. Nadda about awareness! Only latterly have they engaged in public interventions.

 

Cancer Awareness in their words “There are more than 200 different types of cancer that can cause many different symptoms. Although experts have agreed on some of the most important signs and symptoms to look out for, it’s not possible to know all of them. That’s why knowing what’s normal for you is important. It means you’re more likely to recognise something different about yourself.”

 

Right on. That's about the size of it. Go CR-UK!

 

And going back to my comment on NAEDI and men and women aged 75 and above. Cancer is a disease of ageing, in case we’d forgotten. Just ask any single issue cancer charity what awareness work they do to disseminate age relevant cancer information to these populations, what projects in men and women over 75 they have completed or have planned. Just ask. Go on. Just ask.

 

Then listen to the silence.........