CanEth Project: Can you help?
Written by Musmirah_Shahzada on Wednesday, May 23, 2007 10:39
Ethnic data statistics of cancer incidence, management, mortality and survival in the UK
The CanEth project wish to gather evidence, identify best practice and produce clear recommendations to help improve ethnic data collection for statistics of cancer incidence, management, mortality and survival in the UK. CanEth is interested in tackling inequalities as they affect cancer and is part of a Cancer Research UK funded initiative.
Cancer is a major cause of death and illness among minority ethnic groups and particular cancers such as head and neck, prostate and lung are especially common among certain ethnic groups. Accurate collection of ethnicity for cancer statistics will help us to better understand uptake of services and health outcomes, monitor trends, target interventions and allocate resources to better meet the needs of minority ethnic groups and to tackle cancer inequalities.
The NHS has recently produced a ‘practical guide to ethnic monitoring in the NHS and social care’ with examples of good practice. However, there is limited information on the uptake of these guidelines and their practical applicability. Within the cancer setting, family history, social class, material deprivation, lack of access to services and subsequent delay times have all been adversely linked to outcome (i.e. survival); ethnic minorities are associated with later presentation of disease leading to poor survival. There is an urgent need for evidence on how ethnic monitoring data collection might be improved for cancer statistics, what mechanisms might be implemented for data quality checks, and a phased strategy for optimal use of this data in order to encourage improved collection.
The project has the following objectives:
- Literature review of methods, interventions and barriers addressing the collection of ethnicity data (or ethnicity profiling) in primary and secondary care; including examples of good practice.
- Evaluation of health care professionals’ perceptions and experiences of collecting ethnicity data
- Evaluation of consumers’ perceptions, experiences and willingness to provide ethnicity data
- Validation (completeness and accuracy) of ethnicity data collected in a feasibility study of selected PCTs.
- Provision of a written report, summary of good practice.
Can you help?
Can you help by sharing your experiences and views? If so, please complete the attached questionnaire, or forward this email to any colleagues who this may be relevant to.
Many thanks for your time, your contributions are essential to this research.
If you have any questions or would like to share your experience you can contact: Gulnaz Begum CanEth Research Fellow, on behalf of the CanEth study group on:
Tel 02476 150 178 or email: g.begum@warwick.ac.uk
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