Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health, what plans his Department has to support Cervical Cancer Awareness Week on 24 to 30 January 2016.

Ministers welcome and support cervical cancer prevention week. We are fully supportive of the work Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust does to raise awareness of cervical cancer and the importance of cervical screening for eligible women. The Department and Public Health England will be promoting cervical cancer prevention week on social media.

Information on cervical screening is available on the NHS Choices website:

http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/Cervical-screening-test/Pages/Introduction.aspx

There are no plans for a Be Clear on Cancer campaign on cervical cancer.

A number of factors are taken into account when deciding which campaigns to develop and run, with one of the main criteria being the scope to save lives through earlier diagnosis and whether the cancer has a clear early sign or symptom that the general public can act upon should it arise.

Cancer screening programmes in England write to every eligible women giving information about the screening programme and the condition it aims to detect early. Additionally information is produced for the national and regional media and general practitioners raising awareness.

NHS England closely monitors the coverage rates for cervical screening in all age groups and is committed to increasing uptake and reducing variation across England. Local NHS England commissioners analyse coverage rates within their area and work with general practices to improve uptake by sharing best practice. For example, commissioners in London have developed a screening uptake and coverage strategy and delivery plan, including:

- increased public awareness and engagement with screening programmes across all communities; and

- increased engagement with primary care and improved reliability of data.

In addition to this:

- a primary care cancer screening best practice guide has been developed jointly with the transforming cancer services team, clinical commissioning groups and local authority public health representatives; and

- Imperial College is conducting a randomised controlled trial to assess the effectiveness of texting non-responders on improving coverage and uptake.

To increase rates of cervical screening in young women, the National Institute for Health Research Health Technology Assessment programme has commissioned a £1 million study to determine which interventions are effective at increasing screening uptake amongst women who are receiving their first invitation from the NHS Cervical Screening Programme. The study began in November 2011 and reports can be expected in spring 2016.

In addition, the Department’s Behavioural Insight team is developing a trial to investigate the use of behavioural insights to optimise the content of the invitation letter for cervical screening.