World Cancer Day 2022 | Pancreatic Cancer Awareness | Pancreatic Cancer Action

World Cancer Day 2022 is all about Closing the Care Gap. As a cancer charity, Pancreatic Cancer Action is constantly working behind the scenes on projects to close this equality gap. Pancreatic cancer affects everyone, no matter what your ethnicity, language, age or gender may be. Watch our video to understand the current state of pancreatic cancer globally and nationally. Share this with your friends, family, local GP, pharmacist and community groups and help us save lives through early diagnosis. Last November, we worked to break down the barriers and become the first UK cancer charity to translate several of our key pancreatic cancer information and resources for six of the most-spoken languages in the UK. Using data from the 2011 census, we targeted the six other most-spoken languages in England & Wales. These were Polish (with 546,000 speakers in this country), Punjabi (273,000), Urdu (269,000), Bengali (221,000), Gujarati (213,000) and Arabic (159,000). We worked with Absolute Translations to get several of our existing materials translated into these six languages. The work was carried out after our investigations as part of the Underserved Groups survey. The survey was designed to identify specific groups who were both at raised risk of pancreatic cancer and do not currently engage with awareness information. As part of the survey, we identified that many patients within these groups are diagnosed with pancreatic cancer after an emergency presentation instead of through a GP or two-week wait pathway, meaning on average, the groups are diagnosed with a later stage pancreatic cancer that cannot be treated. Our study on ethnicity found that those of white ethnicity have higher 2WW figures than black and Asian groups. The figures demonstrated that an intersectional approach targeting specific groups would be beneficial to discover barriers to primary care presentation and increase survival in these groups. Why are these groups not being diagnosed earlier? Within the survey, we identified that late diagnosis within these different groups may be due to a variety of factors, including the health system, healthcare professional, personal, societal and community factors. This included language barriers, a lack of relevant resources, message formatting and a lack of access to services. How these resources will help One of the solutions identified during the survey was to change the language of resources, materials’ location, and awareness. The location of the materials has been achieved with our Resources in Other languages hub. Here, those within these six language groups can use the language-specific calls to action in their language that takes them to their relevant resources. On the individual language pages, the user is asked if they know the symptoms of pancreatic cancer. They are then provided with some of the key facts, as well as why them knowing the symptoms is important and information on our Decade of Change. They will then see a translated Signs & Symptoms poster which can be downloaded, the Risk Factors, Facts, Quick Guide to Pancreatic Cancer and our Symptoms Diary, all in their own language. Whatever your sex, race or income, if you start noticing pancreatic cancer symptoms, book an appointment to see your GP. Head to our website to find out more: https://pancreaticcanceraction.org/