The ACP responded to NHS Englands announcement of a new independent taskforce to develop a five-year action plan for cancer services that will improve survival rates and save thousands of lives.

Although the focus seems to be primarily on services and treatment which we agree are vital – we need the highest possible standards of care – we were very disappointed not to see environmental and occupational risk factors addressed and actioned in any of the documents referenced for the strategy. Indeed in the report, Five Year Forward View, the emphasis appears to be only on lifestyle interventions.

Although CRUK have narrowed the new cancer strategy to service provision they did acknowledge that the task force is: “A great opportunity for the cancer community to lead development of a cross-system, independent and ambitious new cancer plan……..and addressing the preventable causes of cancer will be key to seeing progress.”

We believe that unless we tackle the primary prevention of cancer i.e. stopping cancer before it starts, we are unlikely to see any improvement in the cancer epidemic. There are many barriers to action on the primary prevention of cancer; cancer is also caused by lack of political will. In our view, the biggest barrier to addressing cancer services is the lack of action on primary prevention which necessitates greater resources into services in the first place.

We sincerley hope this is a great opportunity to include the environmental and occupational risk factors for cancer into new cancer plans…without addressing these confounding risk factors we can only look forward to a cancer forever future.

Our submission can be downloaded here Submission to Cancer Task Force

 

 

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Published by wildcardenvironmentalist

Helen Lynn has worked on issues linking women, gender, health and the environment since 1995, initially at the Women’s Environmental Network where she was health co-ordinator for 12 years, then as a freelance consultant. She has worked internationally and at EU level with Women in Europe for a Common Future and is on their International Advisory Board. Her campaign work began with Putting Breast Cancer on the Map, which encouraged women to map local sources of pollution alongside incidence of breast cancer and she was one of the founders of the No More Breast Cancer Campaign. She is on the Soil Associations Health Products Standards Committee which develops and keeps under review standards for organic health and beauty care products. While at WEN she and the health team initiated the Getting Lippy campaign on harmful ingredients in cosmetics, the campaign covered all aspects of the issue including information on toxic ingredients, making your own cosmetics, misleading labelling and advertising of the products and which alternatives are available. Other campaigns Helen worked on included the Ban Lindane (a toxic pesticide used on crops) Campaign, Healthy Flooring, Enviromenstrual, and Multiple Chemical Sensitivity. She currently facilitates the Alliance for Cancer Prevention which works with occupational and environmental health specialists and activists to challenge the existing emphasis on control and treatment of cancer as the only way forward and to get equal recognition for primary prevention, particularly in relation to environmental and occupational risk factors. In 2014 along with fellow breast cancer activists she began the From Pink to Prevention campaign which aims to move the agenda towards Stopping Breast Cancer before it Starts.