Recommendation 24

HM Government Acknowledged

Tackling inequalities in outcomes, experience and access is a key focus of the NHS Long- Term Plan and 22/23 Planning Guidance, and remains a priority for the NHS Cancer Programme. Approaches to support this are embedded throughout the work of the programme. For example, actions are in place to increase accessibility of the Cancer Quality of Life Survey to help increase representation results, and the Targeted Lung Health Check programme is focused on areas with high lung cancer mortality which typically, also have high levels of deprivation. Data are also used to directly inform recovery actions nationally and locally, including targeting messaging in the national Help Us Help You (HUHY) campaign. All ‘Help us help you’ cancer campaigns incorporate marketing and communications activity focused at relevant minority audiences, especially including more deprived groups. The recent abdominal and urological cancer symptoms campaign targeted Black and South Asian audiences as a priority. This included creating a suite of 50+ different assets aimed specifically at these audiences, including translations, which were distributed to NHS trusts, charities and relevant organisations. We continue to expect Cancer Alliances to understand, use and respond to local data in delivering their programmes of work, from increasing early stage diagnosis with a particular focus on areas of higher deprivation to improving patient experience and personalised care for all sections of the community, using relevant data to understand and act on unwarranted variation. equitably. Since September 2020 the NHS has monitored, used and published data on equity of recovery by patient deprivation, ethnicity, age, sex and tumour type, at national and local level. on in the pandemic, this has now broadly levelled out. Early cancer diagnosis is also one of the specific priority areas in the NHS Core20Plus approach, introduced in 2021/22 to support the reduction of health inequalities experienced by adults, children and young people, at both the national and system level.