Alliance Blog

Healthworks Community Cancer Champions15th November 2022

Healthworks are a community health charity based in Newcastle who work with local communities across the North East, supporting people to live longer, healthier and happier lives by tackling health inequalities with a diverse range of projects, activities and interventions. One arm of the charity is cancer awareness, spreading key messages through word of mouth […]

Meet the team…. Sheron Robson, Programme Manager

I’m Sheron and I’m a programme manager at the Northern Cancer Alliance. I’ve been working at the Alliance for just over five years now and have a varied background working in travel initially, then moving into HIV prevention in the voluntary sector, operational delivery of sexual health services in a provider trust, before moving into […]

Using Behavioural Sciences to Address Health Inequalities

During Covid we saw numbers of cancer referrals fall significantly and although most have recovered since, some cancer pathways are still not seeing the numbers of referrals that we would expect or we are seeing later referrals in those pathways. To try and address this, Northern Cancer Alliance agreed that one of our priorities for […]

Be Cancer Aware

Be Cancer Aware is a co-production project that works with experts by experience from across the North East and Cumbria. Together we deliver education and training to the learning disability community and support campaigns raising awareness of cancer. On 28th September 2022 we were proud to be recognised by the Patient Engagement Network National Awards […]

Why Targeted Lung Health Checks are so Important

Lung cancer causes more deaths in the UK than any other cancer. Symptoms are normally late to appear and it is therefore often diagnosed at a later stage, when treatment options are more limited. However, most lung cancers grow slowly enough for them to be found at an early stage through a CT scan. To […]

Cancer Care Map31st October 2022

Northern Cancer Alliance is working with Cancer Care Map to help make local information and support to those experiencing cancer more widely available. What is Cancer Care Map? Cancer Care Map is an online resource to help people living with cancer to find information, support or services available from organisations in their local area. How […]

An amazing day at PENNA226th October 2022

My name is Julie Stephens (that’s me on the right of the picture with my colleague Andrea) and I work for Healthworks Newcastle as part of the Cancer Community Awareness team covering Newcastle, Gateshead, Sunderland, South Tyneside and Nissan. Our aim is to raise cancer awareness in the local community, to help people be more […]

Your Right to Reducing the Risks of Cancer – information for members of the trans/non-binary community17th August 2022

The Northern Cancer Alliance has recently published a new cancer screening leaflet for members of the trans/non-binary community. This leaflet has been coproduced with Be Trans Support and Community and Healthworks Newcastle. The leaflet provides community members with appropriate information and advice with the aim of encouraging participation in the three cancer screening programmes in England (breast, […]

Improving patient information and support across the region

Macmillan Health and Wellbeing Project I’m Jackie and was appointed as Macmillan Health & Wellbeing Delivery Lead back in March with the Northern Cancer Alliance. I’m excited to be leading a two-year project funded by Macmillan which aims to reduce the variation of information and support available to cancer patients, their carers […]

Improving the accessibility of breast screening follow up letters25th July 2022

Sunderland People First, a group of self-advocates with learning disabilities and autistic people, and Healthwatch Sunderland have worked in partnership to improve the accessibility of the written information sent to women who are recalled after attending for their breast screening mammogram. The absence of accessible information for women who are recalled was highlighted to Healthwatch […]