2021 CRUK Early Diagnosis Research Virtual Series: Registration now open!

Cancer Research UK Early Diagnosis Research Conferences have run every two years since 2011 and are highly valued within our thriving and engaging early diagnosis community. COVID-19 has affected so much; however, we are not going to let it stop us sharing research and collaborating with our fantastic and inspirational community to drive improvements for people affected by cancer. It is just going to be a little different this time round.

From February 2021, the team behind the Early Diagnosis Research conference is instead hosting a virtual series of events. Split across different weeks, we will be creating engaging and impactful opportunities for people to come together and immerse themselves in topics key to the early diagnosis agenda and identify important opportunities for translating findings into policy and practice.

The sessions will be run in 2-3 hour slots either in the morning or the afternoon and will cover a range of topics across the pathway. Registration is free and now OPEN, and you can sign-up on our webpage.

• Wednesday 3rd February
  Session: Cancer Screening: Current Challenges and Opportunities

• Wednesday 10th February
  Session: The Early Detection and Diagnosis Roadmap - Creating the future

• Wednesday 24th February
  Session: Optimising Management of Suspected Cancer in Primary Care

• Wednesday 3rd March
  Session: Improving Cancer Pathways Showcasing insight and evidence from across the UK

We will be announcing the speakers for each session as well as confirmed timings on our dedicated event webpages, in our next ED newsletter and on the CRUK HP twitter account, so make sure youre following to receive the updates.

We hope to see as many people as possible at the virtual series sessions, but in the meantime if you have any questions then please get in contact with one of the project team at EDConference@cancer.org.uk.

New Resource: Cancer Awareness Calendar

The Early Diagnosis Team have created a calendar that lists the majority of the cancer awareness months, weeks and days in the UK. Were hoping that it will be useful for local areas that want to plan public-awareness raising activities with their communities, and are keen to build on communications that will be going out from charities.

Download the resource and if you have any questions or would like to give us any feedback then please email earlydiagnosis@cancer.org.uk

Lung Cancer and COVID-19

Urgent referrals for suspected lung cancer have been slower to recover than other urgent referral routes. We are concerned about what is happening and are hearing reports of patients being diagnosed with late stage lung cancer where potentially curative treatment is not an option, or at a poorer performance status than might have otherwise been the case, which can also impact treatment.

There are many different factors feeding into the challenging picture for lung cancer. This includes public behaviour, and we know that some of the UK nations are doing or planning their own public-facing activity to encourage help-seeking for symptoms. GPs are also crucial, and their alertness to the risk of lung cancer in their patients and timely use of investigations can have a positive impact. With this in mind, we produced a one pager aimed at health professionals that was distributed in October: Recognition and Referral of Lung Cancer during Covid-19. We plan to do the same again in January/February 2021.

COVID-19 Cancer Attitudes and Behaviour Study: A UK wide prospective mixed-methods cohort study

The impact of COVID-19 on UK public awareness and attitudes towards cancer is likely to be considerable, contributing to delayed presentations and referrals, missed screening and later-stage cancer diagnosis.

Weve been working with Cardiff University (PI: Prof. Kate Brain) to assess peoples cancer early detection and prevention attitudes and behaviours during the pandemic and identify impact on existing inequalities. Between August and September 2020, we collected survey data from over 8,000 people through online panels, supplemented with social media recruitment. Survey questions address cancer prevention, early diagnosis and screening, including cancer symptom presentation (primary outcome), screening intentions and health behaviour change attempts. The survey will be repeated in February 2021 to assess change over time and for the Welsh cohort, data will be linked with health records to assess primary care referrals and investigations for suspected cancer symptoms, screening, smoking cessation and number/stage of new cancers diagnosed. Qualitative interviews are also being conducted at both survey time-points (n=60) to understand contextual influences on cancer attitudes and behaviour.

Our findings will be rapidly disseminated to drive public health initiatives for cancer early detection and prevention in the pandemic recovery period. You can find more information here and via our Twitter account @CABSCovid19

Cancer Early Diagnosis Charity Coalition (CEDCC) project update:

COVID-19 continues to have an impact on patient presentation with more GP appointments being carried out remotely, reinforcing the importance for supporting effective GP/patient communication. We thought it would be a good time to give you an update on the CEDCC project to create a resource to optimise communication between patients and GPs. At the last CEDCC meeting in October, we shared our initial patient testing results and presented the latest iteration of the key messages. As we enter the new year, we will be undertaking wider representative public testing of the key messages and proposed format of the resource with the hope of a final resource in Feb/March 2021. Contact earlydiagnosis@cancer.org.uk if youd like to know more.

New Funding Opportunities Available!

As mentioned previously, Cancer Research UK have recently undertaken a review of the way in which we fund research to facilitate greater clarity of funding avenues for our research communities. This has resulted in a more streamlined approach to grant offerings under our four main research themes- to understand, prevent, detect and treat cancer.

Consequently, the Early Diagnosis Advisory Group (EDAG) will now form part of the Early Detection & Diagnosis Committee (ED&D) which has expanded its remit to include policy research. As EDAG will no longer meet as a separate committee, please see our revised timelines for the ED&D Committee. CRUKs Policy, Information and Communications directorate will continue to lead on policy issues and evidence relating to the earlier diagnosis of cancers, so please do continue to contact the team if you have any questions.