Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of launching a prostate cancer awareness campaign for people at high risk of prostate cancer through his forthcoming National Cancer Plan.
The Government understands that more needs to be done to improve outcomes for people at high risk of prostate cancer.
NHS England runs Help Us Help You campaigns to increase knowledge of cancer symptoms and to address the barriers to acting on them, to encourage people to come forward as soon as possible to see their general practitioner. The campaigns focus on a range of symptoms, as well as encouraging body awareness to help people spot symptoms across a wide range of cancers at an earlier point.
The Department continues to advise patients to follow National Health Service guidance on signs and symptoms of several types of cancer, including prostate cancer. This advice is available publicly on the NHS.UK website, at the following link:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/prostate-cancer/
The forthcoming National Cancer Plan for England is in development and will include further details on how we will improve diagnostics, access to treatments, and outcomes for all tumour types, including prostate cancer. As such, the Department has no current plans for a separate assessment of the merits of a prostate awareness campaign.