Quality of Life and Cancer continues to be a key priority area within the TCST Personalised Cancer Care programme. There is an established London Quality of Life and Cancer Working group and two established Task and Finish groups focusing on: Improving survey completeness across London and the Understanding the data and what it means for London.
An action plan has been agreed with key priority areas for the next 6 months and additional areas of focus for 23/24 including developing a broader QoL and cancer strategy for London.

We would love to hear from people affected by cancer who have received the survey. The survey is sent to people eighteen months after diagnosis to complete. We want to hear from you if you have received the survey and please get in touch whether or not you completed the survey. We’d love to hear what it was like to complete the survey or your feedback on why you did not complete the survey.

For those who have completed the survey, we’d be very keen to hear what benefits have they seen?
For those who did not complete the survey, we are keen to understand why and what could be done differently to encourage engagement?

We have been looking at the survey response data for London and are aware that currently none of the London cancer alliances are meeting the National target of 50%. We know there are complex reasons for this which we are focusing on as a region.

The highest proportion of respondents both within London and nationally are from those who identify themselves as White. In order to be able to interpret the data meaningfully and ensure that it represents the diversity of our population of London we are looking at ways to improve survey completeness and obtain better representation. Without good representation across the ages and ethnicities in responses we are in danger of widening health inequalities by planning service improvements based on largely white over 50s responses.

For more information, please contact – philippa.hyman1@nhs.net