Our delivery plan and strategic objectives 2024/2025

We will improve our understanding of and our response to the diverse needs of people affected by cancer, using a holistic, whole person approach, both in terms of how we think and how we operate:

Key areas of work in the delivery of this objective during 2023/2024 included:

• Strengthening our partnership with the patient-led charity, Yorkshire Cancer Community, to develop new ideas for the future of our patient panel. Working with our much-valued existing members, we will be reaching out to local communities to tackle inequalities, being responsive to the needs of local people to reach a wider and more diverse population. 

• Continued work by our Patient Experience Strategy and Improvement Group, bringing together people who can help deliver our ambition to put patient experience on a par with clinical outcomes. The group brings together people who can help to make this happen, including patients and their representatives; Trustees of Yorkshire Cancer Community; the lay members of our Cancer Alliance Board; clinicians and data analysts.
• Delivering more engagement work with minority communities and community organisations with an interest in the transformation of cancer services.
• Undertaking work to tackle barriers to screening uptake for seldom heard and vulnerable groups.
• Conducting specific engagement work to understand what matters to people when it comes to the future design and approach of non-surgical oncology (cancer care), or NSO for short, services.

Learn more about our Patient Experience Strategy and Improvement Group

Read more about how to get involved in the work of the Cancer Alliance

We work with our partners to prevent, find, diagnose and treat more people affected by cancer.  We will measure what we do and develop the right clinical networks and relationships to achieve shared goals.

Key areas of work in the delivery of this objective during 2023/2024 included:

• Continuing to develop our network of Optimal Pathway Groups (OPGs), bringing together all relevant stakeholders, from clinicians, managers, commissioners, primary care, patient representatives, and voluntary sector colleagues, to ensure a ‘whole person’ approach to improvement.
• Driving forward an improvement programme for Lynch syndrome screening and surveillance pathways. Health professionals working in gynaecology and colorectoral cancer were invited to an event to collaborate, share best practice, network and discuss the issues associated with the provision of mainstream testing and improved surveillance. The event was organised by our newly-appointed Lynch syndrome project manager/clinical nurse specialist, along with the North East and Yorkshire Genomic Medicine Service.
• The production of a webinar, aimed at GPs, featuring our Clinical Director Dr Helena Rolfe, along with colorectal OPG Chair Rick Saunders, and Dr Rob Eastham, GP and Clinical Lead at NHS WY Integrated Care Board. The webinar explains the new FIT (faecal immunochemical) pathway following on from the NICE/BSC evidence-based recommendations.
• Expanding relationships with linked operational delivery networks (ODNs) and other partners in the clinical and professional directorate of the West Yorkshire Integrated Care Board, where there may be opportunities to work together across disease-based specialisms.
• Continuing to maintain relationships with partners in the West Yorkshire Association of Acute Trusts (WYAAT), to ensure that the needs of cancer patients are understood in the development of community diagnostic centre infrastructures. 
• Continuing to work with our Cancer Alliance cross-cutting forums, covering a range of issues rather than a focus on one individual cancer, to ensure appropriate focus on performance, access and recovery.

Read more about our Optimal Pathway Groups

Build stronger and more robust partnerships to help make a positive difference to the inequalities in access, care, and outcomes faced by different groups of people affected by cancer. 

Key areas of work in the delivery of this objective during 2023/2024 included:

• A campaign in partnership with charity OUTpatients to address the inequalities and misinformation around cervical screening within the LGBTIQ+ community. The ‘Remove the Doubt’ campaign ran in two phases from April to August 2023 and focused on the message ‘It’s your right to get screened.’ It aimed to raise awareness of the signs and symptoms of cervical cancer and to increase uptake in cervical screening by the LGBTIQ+ community across West Yorkshire and secured wide-ranging media interest.
• Our work with the Yorkshire Cancer Community on the Cancer SMART programme to encourage awareness and understanding of cancer messages in vulnerable and seldom-heard communities has seen a significant increase in engagement over the past year: 201 digital champions - an increase of 40 on the previous year; a 108% increase in events attended the previous year; Facebook engagement increased by 140%, while Instagram reach increased by 205%.
• The Cancer Alliance attended the All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) to take part in a debate about addressing inequalities in cancer diagnosis and treatment amongst people in the LGBTIQ+ community, as well as those who are disabled and neurodivergent.
• Examining and acting on the barriers to cancer screening access for vulnerable groups in society.  This will include using the power of community advocacy to improve take up of the bowel, breast and cervical programmes, alongside targeted lung health checks.
• Supporting partnership working opportunities with our Hepatitis C Operational Delivery Network to support improved surveillance and case finding for patients affected by cancer.

Learn more about our work with the Yorkshire Cancer Community and the Cancer SMART programme

Read more about our broader Healthy Communities programme

Encourage the adoption of innovative care practices and new models of working to deliver benefits to patients and to the wider cancer workforce. This includes supporting the delivery of the NHS Cancer Programme’s strategic approach to the faster diagnosis of cancer:

Key areas of work in delivering this objective during 2023/2024 included

• Continued delivery of the Cancer Alliance local innovation competition, working in collaboration with Health Innovation Yorkshire & Humber. The competition provided more than £1.7m to initiatives improving cancer early diagnosis and patient experience in line with the NHS Long Term Plan. In a new development, it widened its scope to include voluntary, community and social enterprise organisations, as well as making patient education bursaries available.
• Successful recipients included a project to increase awareness of cancer in people with learning disabilities and the front-line staff who work with them. The charity People Matters was successful in applying for funding for the project to offer the opportunity for vulnerable people, such as those with learning disabilities, to be better aware of when to access cancer treatment services and to have the confidence to do so.
• Work with Calderdale and Huddersfield NHS Foundation Trust (CHFT) to implement Cytosponge technology was shortlisted for the national Health Service Journal awards. Cytosponge is a new technology, where patients swallow a sponge on a string to obtain an accurate sample for investigation. CHFT is now one of a limited number of truts around the UK to have completely caught up with surveillance of patients with Barrett’s Oesophagus.
• Partnership with innovative patient engagement service Appt Health has increased public uptake of cervical screening. The project takes a behavioural science approach, encouraging people from groups where uptake is lower to attend cervical screening - assisted by digital technology. 
• Cancer Alliance funding for two nursing posts to develop the E-PROMs offer in support of developments in non-surgical oncology across West Yorkshire and Harrogate. EPROMs are electronically reported outcome measures - with technology enabling the patient to self-report any symptoms.

We will sustain and further build our integrated, happy and successful team in the Cancer Alliance. We will also work with our partners to deliver the cancer workforce needed for the future.

This objective encompasses organisational development along with a range of training and personal development activities, and is overseen by our Programme Director and Deputy Director.

• A second cohort of clinical leaders took part in the Alliance’s System Leadership Development Programme, provided by Prospect Business Consulting, extending this programme to other groups of staff including lead cancer nurses and cancer managers. 
• The Cancer Alliance has an organisational development plan focusing on how we will continue to be a system leader in cancer services locally. 

• Roll out the community model of support, enabling systemwide support to patients and their families from primary to secondary care.
• Achieve national operational performance targets.
• Carry out a scoping of psychosocial support services across West Yorkshire and Harrogate and develop an improvement plan.
• Work with colleagues in local places to expand pre-existing models of prehabilitation to provide equality of access across West Yorkshire and Harrogate.
• Alongside the new patient panel, ensure Cancer Alliance work is informed and influenced by the voice of people affected by cancer.
• Provide easy access to information about cancer for people across West Yorkshire and Harrogate through improved interactive and digital content on the Cancer Alliance website.

• Develop improved referral pathways for liver cancer, requiring call and recall for surveillance.
• Support Trusts to use technological innovations to deliver Multi Disciplinary Team (MDT) streamlining, where identified as a clinically-led priority.
• Respond to the national directive to support new care pathways for low risk gynaecology patients referred with bleeding associated with Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT).

• Review of differentials in early diagnosis and treatment intervention rates to consider non-clinical areas of variation in the bladder and pancreatic pathways.

• Support the development of local Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) and Innovation applications through the engagement of Optimal Pathway Groups (OPGs).

• Each OPG to have workplans relating to defined clinical standards review, educational events and implementation of treatment variation recommedations

• Continue the expansion of the Targeted Lung Health Check Programme across West Yorkshire and Harrogate, enabling more participants to undertake a lung health check assessment to identify high risk lung cancer patients.
• Work with regional public health and local authority commissioners to encourage the uptake of Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) vaccination in the catch-up cohorts, including the delivery of an HPV awareness campaign.
• Co-create and evaluate the effectiveness of a multi-faceted intervention to improve bowel screening coverage within inner city Bradford for South Asian patients.
• Participate and engage in the Yorkshire Kidney Screening Trial to deliver abdominal scans that aid the diagnosis of kidney cancer, alongside other incidental findings (both renal and non renal).
• Support local primary care teams to provide Cancer Care Co-ordinator roles (or equivalent), focusing on all parts of the cancer pathway.
• Through delivery of the Cancer SMART programme, ensure that cancer becomes an everyday conversation and increase awareness of the signs and symptoms of all cancers.
• Through participation in the YORQUIT programme, support smokers in Yorkshire to attend lung cancer screening and lower their cancer risk.

• Accelerate the development of personalised cancer vaccine treatments (Cancer Vaccine Launchpad).
• Streamline pathways for patients on an urgent suspected skin cancer pathway and optimise referrals into secondary care - GPs with Special Interest pilot).
• Complete the business case for the new non surgical oncology delivery model.
• Deliver the innovations awards scheme/competition, impacting positively on early diagnosis targets and operational performance.
• Partner with Appt Health on the delivery of behavioural science messaging and automated booking of cervical cancer screening appointments to influence uptake and participation.
• Evaluate the ability of the PinPoint blood test to provide doctors with the information they need to more effectively triage patients when they first present with symptoms.

• Support providers with the delivery of the Aspirant Cancer Career and Education Development Programme (ACCEND) framework, enabling a consistent approach to workforce development.
• NSO workforce - support pathway mapping, recruitment and retention initiatives and workforce redesign across the non-surgical oncology workforce - skin, gynae and breast pathway review, and provisionally liver.
• NSO capacity and demand - scope ideas and interventions to support resilience and capacity development for the systematic anti cancer therapy (SACT) workforce
• Deliver and evaluate the programme to upskill 42 aspiring Clinical Nurse Specialists across the North East and Yorkshire region.