Community engagement

Partnering with Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation

Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation is here to support all Trusts implementing a targeted lung health check.

Using experience and learnings gleaned from our own lung health check in Nottingham, and other community engagement work and awareness campaigns, we are able to provide the following tools free of cost:

• Existing patient-facing information
• Existing online content including video

Click below to see the information and content available

In addition to this, we would also welcome the opportunity to partner with each Trust and help develop and execute a bespoke community engagement strategy. This would involve meeting with the project group to understand the obstacles faced (e.g. ethnic diversity, illiteracy). We would then develop a bespoke activity plan for community engagement.

Tailored tools for community engagement could include:

• Tailored leaflets and posters
• Local advocate video content for peer-to-peer engagement
• Targeted video content for GP surgeries
• MegaLungs
• Face your Fear virtual reality experience
• Symptom awareness / Attitude awareness interactive quizzes
• Local awareness events
• Targeted social media campaigns.

Costs would be negotiated depending on the scale of activity and level of staff input. There has not been block funding from NHS England so it would be on a trust by trust level. We understand areas have been given a portion of the £70 million allocated for lung health checks for the work to deliver the project, including community engagement.

The importance of community engagement

It was clear from the Site Collaboration Event on Thursday 2nd May 2019, how much enthusiasm there is for this project and, if successful, the potential impact it could have on the early diagnosis of lung cancer – both now and long-term. We want to work together to make each project as successful as possible.

Community engagement will play an essential part in the success of targeted lung health checks but there are many hurdles to overcome, some shared and some unique.

We know from our own community work, engaging people about lung cancer is not easy and there remains a lack of awareness about the disease, its symptoms and the treatment options available.

As part of our Face your Fear campaign for lung cancer awareness month last year, we undertook a month-long tour of the UK, engaging with high incidence rate communities with our virtual reality experience to increase symptoms awareness and challenging the misconceptions around the disease.

Prior to engaging with the campaign:

• 16% could not name a single symptom of lung cancer
• 19% did not know you could have curative treatment
• 24% didn’t think you could have surgery

After engaging with the campaign:

• 98% would definitely go to doctor if they had symptoms like in the video
• 97% would support a national screening programme
• 38% recognised they are ‘at risk’

Working together, we can continue to overcome the obstacles faced and challenge the misconceptions around lung cancer to engage the at-risk population and save lives.

If you would like to discuss partnering with Roy Castle Lung Cancer Foundation, please contact either: