Prevention is at the heart of everything that we do at Eve, we want to stop every case of cancer we can and get people diagnosed at the earliest opportunity, when cancer is most treatable.
But as we know, the awareness of the five gynae cancers is worryingly low, with only 2% of people in the UK able to name all five. Also, we know that health inequalities affect the knowledge and outcomes of cancer. Research has shown that South Asian women have worse cancer-related outcomes and typically present with more advanced disease than other ethnic populations. It was also found that Black and Asian women were proportionally more likely to be diagnosed with womb cancer at stage 4 (late) rather than at stage 1 (early).
We have to change this. We need make sure that we are raising awareness of gynaecological cancers in as many communities as possible, and outreach work is essential to this.
Over the past year, we have collaborated with several women’s charities and organisations for a piece of outreach work; Cysters, Aawaz, Bury Active Women’s Centre and BAME Connect (from Oak Community Development). With these incredible organisations, we co-created informative sessions and resources for women from South Asian communities in Greater Manchester and Birmingham.
The three sessions covered 1) an overview of gynae health and gynae cancers, 2) how to best prepare and book an appointment, and 3) what to expect in different gynae appointments. We made a few videos to accompany these sessions and translated the resources into Bangla, Punjabi and Urdu. Then, with the help of some amazing nurses and doctors who volunteered their time, these sessions were delivered by these organisations to the women they work with.
We also worked with Chronically Brown, a charity that raises awareness to improve accessibility for Disabled South Asian people. They helped us improve the accessibility of our resources and we will be running a session with them in the coming weeks.
With the four different community organisations we delivered 20 workshops to nearly 200 women!
Before and after the workshops we asked the women a few questions, to gauge what they knew about gynae health and how much they had learnt. Of the women who answered our feedback questionnaires, 68% felt they had just a little or very little understanding of the topics before the session, then 96% felt they had a good or very good understanding of the topics after taking part in the workshop!
We had some fantastic feedback from the women who took part, including:
- “I know in more detail what smear tests are for and the importance of them”
- “Good sessions, good translation in Urdu”
- “So much better that you are able to explain things to us in Urdu and Punjabi. Also I can ask questions in Punjabi because it is so helpful to me”
- “This session has given me more confidence, and enough information to be more open with my GP or nurse on my next visit”
Since we started running community outreach projects, working with community groups in the South Asian community and the womb cancer awareness campaign, You Need to Know, that we ran with the North East London Cancer Alliance, the number of South Asian women contacting our nurse information and support service, Ask Eve, has increased from 1% of all contacts to 8% (from January 2023 to June 2023)!
We are absolutely thrilled with the feedback from these sessions, and our success is very much shared with our collaborators- so a huge thank you to them.
We are planning to do more outreach sessions, work with more communities, translate more materials, and help raise awareness of the five gynae cancers and break down the taboos around women’s health.
Because knowledge is power.