Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what discussions his Department has had with Public Health England on progress made by the BeClear Campaign to improve the detection of rare cancers over the last (a) six months and (b) year.

The National Cancer Intelligence Network (NCIN) part of Public Health England (PHE) now undertakes evaluation of the Be Clear on Cancer (BCOC) campaigns. For each campaign there is a defined set of metrics identified to evaluate the impact of BCOC campaigns. These include whether: campaigns are raising awareness of signs and symptoms of cancer; more people are going to their general practitioners with the symptoms promoted by the campaign; more people are being referred urgently for suspected cancer; there is an increase in diagnostic activity; there is evidence of a shift towards earlier stage disease and; of those referred urgently for suspected cancer, how many turn out to have that cancer.

Within the last 12 months, PHE has run campaigns on five rarer cancers: the “blood in pee” campaign for bladder and kidney cancers (a national campaign following a successful regional pilot campaign); the “persistent bloating” campaign for ovarian cancer (regional pilot campaign) and, also as a regional pilot, the “persistent heartburn” campaign for oesophago-gastric cancer (oesophageal and stomach). The evaluation metrics for the campaigns were discussed, agreed and approved by the Public Awareness and Primary Care Steering Group chaired by NHS England's National Clinical Director for Cancer and which includes members representing PHE (PHE - Marketing and NCIN); NHS England, NHS Improving Quality; Cancer Research UK; Macmillan Cancer Support; Department of Health officials and other stakeholders.

In May 2014, Cancer Research UK prepared a BCOC evaluation update which is available on the BCOC website at:

www.cancerresearchuk.org/cancer-info/spotcancerearly/naedi/beclearoncancer/background#evidenceandevaluation

The update includes findings from the local oesophago-gastric, ovarian and regional “blood in pee” campaigns. The decision to repeat the national “blood in pee” campaign for bladder and kidney cancer in the autumn of 2014 is based on positive evidence from the evaluation of the regional campaign and encouraging initial evaluation results from the national campaign which ran from October - November 2013. These results demonstrated notable changes in symptom awareness and referral activity.