Welcome to the March Answer Cancer update for 2024. Hopefully you will find some helpful links, news and information to launch you into spring.
Newsletter Highlights
- Book onto our range of training sessions up until June 2024. All sessions are online. Feel free to share this information across your networks.
- See highlights of our Storytelling Workshop.
- Find out what we’ve done to respond to your feedback from the January 2024 Winter Warmer event.
- Preview our Bowel Cancer Awareness month campaign.
- Tell us what you have been doing and get a chance to win £50 in our quarter 4 survey prize draw.
- Discover the wealth of resources available on our YouTube channel.
- Get the update on the Answer Cancer Bee Seen, Get Screened initiative.
Upcoming Training & Events
Free training sessions from Answer Cancer, the Greater Manchester Cancer Screening Engagement Programme! Different dates and times are available to suit you. We are now offering training through a mixture of online and face-to-face sessions, so please make note when signing up!
You need to register in advance to attend the sessions, but you can join as many sessions as you like. For a list of courses and register, please click here – Training Courses – Answer Cancer (answercancergm.org.uk)
Talk Cancer Courses
The 2024 dates for Cancer Research UK Talk Cancer and Train the Presenter courses are now live on the Greater Manchester Cancer Academy’s website.
Delivered by nurse trainers, these online, interactive workshops give you the knowledge to raise cancer awareness in your community so that you can feel confident talking to people about:
• How to reduce the risk of cancer
• The importance of spotting cancer early
• The national cancer screening programmes.
If you promote health and wellbeing in your community, the Talk Cancer training will help you make your conversations more impactful.
There’s not better teacher than a story
This is what we learned from our fabulous Answer Cancer Champion Rona Barbour, who delivered our first Story Telling workshop on the 13th March. Its fair to say that she had us all enthralled with her stories and we picked up plenty of tips and tricks for making our own communications more engaging.
Rona left us all wanting more, so we are planning further events to develop communication skills in the future. Look out for our event invites.
You said, we did
At our Winter Warmer event in January, we asked participants to fill out comment cards and tell us how we could better support them in their role as a Cancer Champion. There was a lot of consensus amongst the replies and the main themes are reflected in the table below.
If you have any further comments you would like to share with us please contact us.
April is bowel cancer awareness month. Help us to spread the word
Nearly four in ten people can’t name a single symptom of bowel (colon) cancer, despite it being the fourth most common cancer in the UK. Knowing the symptoms, and acting on them, means that bowel cancer can be diagnosed earlier when it is more treatable and curable. But fewer than four in 10 people are diagnosed at the early stages. As Answer Cancer Champions we can change this and save more lives.
April is Bowel Cancer Awareness Month, a fantastic opportunity to raise awareness of bowel cancer. Answer Cancer will be sharing important messages across all of our social media platforms. Help us to spread the word by liking and sharing our Facebook posts or follow us on X and retweet our posts. Don’t forget to tell you family, friends and wider networks about the importance of returning their bowel cancer screening kit when it comes through the post and raise awareness of the signs and symptoms to look out for.
£50 is up for grabs if you fill out our quarterly survey
Join our other lucky voucher winners by sending us your feedback and letting us know what you have been doing over the last 3 months. Every survey gets entered into our prize draw and your feedback ensures that we can tell our funders about the amazing work our Champions do.
The closing date for entry is Monday 1st April. Don’t be foolish, get your survey submitted.
If are an Individual Cancer Champion complete your survey on the button below –
Individual Cancer Champions survey
If you are an Organisational Cancer Champion or a Bee Seen, Get Screened pledger, complete your survey on the button below –
Organisational Champion and BSGS survey
Check out the Answer Cancer YouTube channel
The Answer Cancer YouTube channel has a wealth of resources and information for you to use whenever you need, including videos in community languages, training videos, campaign information, interviews and discussions.
Why not check out our bowel screening resources throughout April. Sharing them is an easy way to raise awareness in your workplace or with friends and family. Click below to see everything we have on offer –
Bee Seen, Get Screened
The Answer Cancer Bee Seen, Get Screened pledge reached a milestone last month with its 100th employer sign up. This means that more that 70,000 employees in Greater Manchester are now covered by the pledge and benefit from:
- Time off work or flexible working to attend cancer screening appointments.
- Health and wellbeing initiatives in the workplace.
- Opportunities to talk about cancer and the importance of cancer screening at work.
Bolton Wanderers in the Community are one of our recent pledgers and the Answer Cancer team were excited to go to the ground on a match day to “Tackle Cancer Together” with other local health and wellbeing organisations, club staff and fans. We talked about the signs and symptoms of cancer, the importance of regular cancer screening and the opportunity for other employers to sign up to the pledge.
If you would like to know more about the Bee Seen, Get Screened pledge, you can visit our website or you can sign up below.
If you have any questions or queries please contact us using the link below.
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