Cancer screening for people experiencing homelessness for North Central London Cancer Alliance
People experiencing homelessness have significantly lower uptake of cancer screening than the general population. Preoccupied by multiple challenges and living unpredictable lives, they are often at saturation point – overwhelmed and overloaded. So how do we inspire preventative health, without adding to their load?
We worked with North Central London Cancer Alliance to develop a campaign to address these barriers. We conducted focus groups with rough sleepers and residents of hostels, to understand their stories, experiences and concerns around accessing healthcare services and cancer screening, as well as interviewing frontline practitioners.
Our findings distilled three core insights that became the foundation of our campaign – Your Health First:
- Need for clear information – A need to provide pragmatic information in a concise, jargon-free way, and translated into other languages
- Power of peer-to-peer – Work with trusted intermediaries and peers to stimulate conversations about screening and share positive messages
- Fatalism, fear and a full plate – A need to provide reassurance about the process and use real life, honest case studies
We created a suite of Your Health First materials: posters featuring known local people with lived experience of homelessness, z-cards with screening information and branded mugs for use in homeless hubs. These were distributed through nine stakeholder organisations, including hostels, day centres, and drug and alcohol services, where we briefed staff to engage confidently in conversations about cancer screening with service users ahead of the five-week campaign.
To increase salience, we commissioned a piece of pavement art featuring the Your Health First logo outside a popular day centre in Haringey, aiming to attract attention and prompt discussion during launch week. We also produced a short social media film of the artwork to support online sharing by stakeholder organisations.
The response was encouraging; individuals in the target audience engaged with the campaign more openly than expected, and crucially, the frontline staff reported feeling confident, equipped and safe to have conversations they wouldn’t have felt having previously. All stakeholders plan to continue promoting Your Health First beyond the campaign period.