Background
In 2011, ‘Improving Outcomes: a strategy for cancer’ was published to raise awareness of the symptoms of cancer and further support earlier diagnosis. So, has progress been made. Quite naturally, policy makers as well as the public need to see how efficient these policies have been at addressing their aims.
Data and methods
To find out we used data from 3.5 m patients to look at the difference between the richest and the poorest patients surviving cancer and whether this has changed over time.
And this is what we found…
Results
In 2013 more people are surviving cancer longer, but the deprivation gap still looks the same.
We believe the various policies and strategies have made a difference in some areas but not in reducing inequalities/the deprivation gap.
Recommendations
We recommend looking more closely at how the NHS interacts with the poorest and whether policies that target the health care system, rather than individual behavior, could reduce the inequalities.
Aimilia Exarchakou
Research Fellow
Aimilia works in the Cancer Survival Group and her interests are: