Cervical Cancer Prevention Week

I've worked at Roche for 13 years, starting in the sales team and then moving into marketing. In my current role, I focus on understanding the challenges, needs and expectations of our customers for high medical value solutions (like HPV testing) and how these can best support the patient journey. 

Outside of work, I'm a busy mother of two boys, and I enjoy exercising and cold water swimming.

Screening attendance remains a true issue. In the UK around 30% of people do not attend their appointment when invited. This lack of attendance can be down to many things: fear, embarrassment, and cultural or language barriers to name but a few.

We're also seeing a decline in attendance in the younger age group (25-30), this may be due to the fact that they have been vaccinated and do not think they need to attend their screen because of this.

However, the HPV vaccine does not protect against all types of HPV and there is still a small chance that you could get cervical cancer, so it really is important that this age group still attend.

It’s important to focus on the needs of the population and try to make access to screening and vaccinations as easy, comfortable and straightforward as possible.

We've been working to break down those barriers to attendance through our 'Let’s Talk Cervical screening' campaign, and in addition we've created a toolkit for the NHS which includes posters, patient information leaflets and banners that can be localised to highlight how many people within each specific area are not up to date with their screen.

More and more evidence is coming out that highlights the potential benefits of HPV self collection especially for people who do not currently attend their screen.

You Screen, a study that was published last year, found that opportunistic offering of self collection in primary care could be a more effective approach for improving cervical screening participation and access amongst this group.

Research evidence continues to suggest that self-sampling can promote greater equity and accessibility of screening, including traditionally underserved populations.

The UK National Screening Committee is currently consulting on whether to offer an HPV self-sampling option to under-screened people in the cervical screening programme, so watch this space.

I think awareness and education are key! Everyone has such busy lives, and it is important that we find the time for that 10-15-minute appointment.

Over the past couple of years, we have partnered with Gateshead Health NHS Foundation Trust to break down barriers to screening within the Gateshead area. The campaign found that 38,000 people in the area were not up to date with their screens.

The aim of the campaign is to make the people of Gateshead aware of the importance of this test to their health and understand how the cervical screening experience can be improved.

This year, the same campaign has been launched across Yorkshire and the Humber, where we have been working in partnership with the Humber and North Yorkshire Cancer Alliance.

Local data shows that more than 430,000 women and people with a cervix between the ages of 25 and 64 years are not up to date with their screening, this means around one in three of those eligible have not attended their latest appointment.