Co-Production is central to any effective health intervention.
This project was designed with co-production at its heart. A series of workshops bringing all of the stakeholders together to collaborate in the development of guidelines and recommendations.
To develop workable practice guidelines for the role of community pharmacies in cancer early detection it is important to involve all of the key stakeholders.
Our Partners
Workshops 1
Our three co-production workshops were held in both London and Newcastle, the first focussing on community pharmacies and raising awareness of colorectal cancer
Workshops 2
Our second set of workshops co-produced ideas to the question What can community pharmacies do to identify people at above average risk of CRC?
Workshops 3
Our third set of workshops put CP back into the broader context of other health providers. The facilitator asked the group to consider What can CP staff do to sign-post people of higher CRC risk to relevant services?
Pharmacists
Community pharmacies
Members of the public
Bowel cancer patients
Primary care physicians
Cancer screening hubs
Bowel cancer screening and early detection programme management
Co-production Workshops
In total we held three co-production workshops across London and Newcastle, and one consolidation meeting bringing people from both sites together, and two dissemination meetings. Individuals from across our key stakeholders group came together and discussed the issues of bowel cancer early detection, bringing their own experience and knowledge.
Together the stakeholders came up with proposals for ways in which community pharmacies might be able to play a role in improving early detection rates. These ideas were grouped and ranked by participants.
Patient and Public Involvement (PPI)
This project is aimed at improving early cancer diagnosis for the public. Therefore it was essential that PPI representatives were intimately involved in the development and delivery of this project through-out. The PPI lead was Lindy Berkman, Lindy is herself a bowel cancer survivor and has been involved in patient advocacy for many years. She was also a co-applicant on the funding proposal.
A PPI panel was recruited and they met twice to consider the design and development of the project. PPI representatives Lindy Berkman and Stephen Rowley took a role in presenting and facilitating the stakeholder workshops. Patient and public representatives agreed that community pharmacy has potential to support people to catch bowel cancer early but expressed concerns about privacy and the appropriateness of involving the wider pharmacy team. Feedback from PPI representatives was incorporated into the discussion of our findings in our PHABRIC I journal publication.
Check out our project podcast below:
Stephen Rowley took the lead in directing and producing a podcast showcasing the life-course of this project. He also set up this microsite and worked with researcher Evelyn Brunsdon to develop it.