February's Newsletter: Let's Talk About Cancer
An overview of how cancer affects people with learning disabilities and what we are doing to tackle these health inequalities.
Dear Member,
Following on from King Charles's recent cancer diagnosis, once again Cancer is in the news.
People with learning disabilities make up around 2% of the entire UK population and unfortunately, like everyone else, cancer will affect them or someone they know at some point during their lives.
Cancer is the leading cause of death in the UK, as 25% of all deaths recorded are a result of the disease. Also the survival rates for cancer, in the UK are much lower than other comparable countries. SOURCE: https://www.cancerresearchuk.org/health-professional/our-reports-and-publications#cancerUK
In fact, cancer screening and life expectancy is lower amongst people with learning disabilities.
Cancer is also one of the main underlying causes of death among people with learning disabilities and tumours tend to be diagnosed later in people with learning disabilities.
Adults with learning disabilities are more than 50 times more likely to die before the age of 50 years than others, whilst in many institutions there's a lack of reasonable adjustments to support cancer diagnosis and treatment for people with learning disabilities.
In addition, the expression of distress and pain amongst people with learning disabilities is highly individual and some do not report any changes which can lead to substantial delays in symptoms being identified and any cancer being diagnosed.
All of us, who are, involved in the fight against health inequalities must also recognize that many care staff lack the training and knowledge required to identify the signs and symptoms of cancer or even the risk factors for certain cancers.
An analysis of NHS Hospital Episode Statistics suggests that people with learning disabilities are far more likely to die from testicular cancer than the general population, with a one in 10 chance of dying from the cancer, as opposed to a one in 36 chance in the general population. SOURCE: Public Health England
What is Easy Health doing about these Inequalities?
The Wandsworth GP federation (BHCIC) has commissioned Easy Health to create and rollout a survey to assess cervical screening pathways accessibility for people with learning disabilities.
As a result, Easy Health has created a survey to get patient's feedback, so we can better understand their experience and to help us tackle health inequalities together.
The Survey will assess cervical screening pathways accessibility for people with learning disabilities on behalf of the Wandsworth GP federation (BHCIC) .
We are rolling out the survey to all local surgeries Learning Disability Leads from February 2024 until the end of March 2024 .
So, watch this space, for more information and also feel free to access and share all our great easy read/accessible resources on cancer, the available treatments and other related conditions.
https://www.easyhealth.org.uk/pages/easy-read-health-leaflets-and-films
If on your journey towards accessibility you realize you need more support, feel free to contact us.
We collaborate with colleagues with a lived experience of learning disability &/ or neurodiversity to offer the following services:
- Translation: standard health documents into easy read documents
- Training for health and social care professionals on how to improve communication and support for people with disabilities &/ or autism.
Click on the link below, for more information on accessing our services:
https://www.easyhealth.org.uk/pages/other-service
Also free documents on a variety of health conditions are easily accessible on our website:
https://www.easyhealth.org.uk/
Finally, please feel free to contact us for a chat, a quote, a booking or if you have any easy read/accessible health related resources that you wish to share.
Kind regards
The Easy Health Team
email: [email protected]
