20 – 26 January 2013

Every day in the UK 9 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer and 3 women will lose their lives to the disease. Cervical Cancer is largely preventable thanks to cervical screening but we are worried that uptake is dropping with over 20% of women not taking up their screening invitation. Cervical Cancer Prevention Week (CCPW) is therefore an opportunity to raise awareness of the disease and ways to prevent it.

Alongside prevention, this year the charity focused activity on early detection and the importance of knowing the symptoms of cervical cancer.

We are incredibly grateful to so many of our supporters who were active during the work, it made a huge difference to the impact we were able to achieve.

During the week Jo’s Cervical Cancer Trust:

• Released the results of a symptoms awareness study. The study looked into women’s awareness of cervical cancer symptoms, how they would act should they experience any and how this compares to reactions to more common ailments. The results were worrying. They included showing that a third more women would visit the doctor with a common cold than symptoms of cervical cancer whilst many women could not identify the signs of the disease.
• Produced a set of symptoms awareness videos which highlighted signs of the disease to look out for as well telling the story of two cervical cancer survivors who had experienced symptoms. View the videos here.
• Distributed over 36,000 materials to health practices, hospitals, individuals and companies to promote cervical cancer prevention. A new symptoms awareness poster was also produced and requested over 750 times.
• Announced a new campaign and service in Northern Ireland. We launched the country’s first ever cervical cancer support group and called for women in Northern Ireland to take up their cervical screening invitation. This call to action included an advertising bus campaign in Belfast which lead to an 87% increase in web traffic from Belfast. For more details click here.
• Joined forces with Welsh cancer charity Tenovus to raise awareness of cervical cancer prevention in Wales throughout January. Click here to read our press release.
• Launched five new support groups across England, Scotland and Northern Ireland. New support groups were launched in Ayrshire, Belfast, Glasgow, Hull and Leicester. Thank you to all our group leaders for helping to promote their group and cervical cancer prevention in the media.
• Raised awareness in Scotland. In addition to launching the Ayrshire and Glasgow support groups we worked with key nationals on features around cervical cancer prevention.
• Co-hosted an information day for Black and Minority Ethnic (BME) and faith groups. The day included talks about cervical cancer prevention from leading experts as well as workshops enabling participants to share and learn best practice.
• Hosted a Girls’ Night Out celebrity event to raise awareness amongst the media. The event brought together journalists, celebrities and cervical cancer survivors to hear first hand the impact a diagnosis of both cervical abnormalities and cervical cancer can have on a woman. Dr Dawn Harper, GP and Embarrassing Bodies presenter discussed the importance of cervical screening whilst TV presenter and relationship expert Tracey Cox gave media interviews about her experience of going through a diagnosis.
• Announced the winners of the 2012 Cervical Screening Awards. This year’s winning entry went to Rita Sandhu, Cervical Screening Outreach Nurse from Walsall Healthcare NHS Trust. The Highly Commended accolade was awarded to NHS Lanarkshire’s North East Unit Health Improvement Team for their ‘Smear Amnesty’.
• Utilised our digital platforms throughout CCPW asking the media, celebrities and our supporters to tweet and write about the charity online. This resulted in an 11.5% increase in our Twitter followers whilst our Facebook likes jumped 24%.
• Connected with the media. CCPW 2013 secured over 160 pieces of media with a potential reach of almost 6 million readers and listeners and 160million unique users online. The equivalent advertising value of print articles alone came to over £170,000. To read some of the articles click here.
• Gained support from opinion formers across the UK. These included Parliamentarians such as Annette Brooke MP , a response from the Secretary of State about cervical cancer symptoms awareness, an Oral Question tabled by Dennis Roberts MSP to Alex Salmond (the Scottish First Minister), a motion tabled by Jackie Baillie MSP and a written question tabled by Janet Finch-Saunders (Welsh Assembly Member). In addition the charity has received positive responses to requests for meetings whilst Alex Neil, Cabinet Secretary for Health in Scotland has agreed to meet with the charity.

Overall, our CCPW 2013 campaign spread the message of symptoms awareness and cervical screening across the whole of the UK. We couldn’t have achieved so much without the help of all our volunteers and case studies. Thank you to everyone that helped us raise awareness during CCPW!