Partnership Forum celebrates successes and launches cancer alliance plans

Written by: Paul Thomas

04/06/2024

Over 90 partners in cancer care from across north east London attended North East London Cancer Alliance’s first ever Partnership Forum on Wednesday 22 May. The event, called ‘A Year of Progress and a Vision for the Future’ took place at the Hyatt Hotel in Stratford and featured an impressive line-up of national, regional and local experts in cancer.

The main focus of the event was to highlight the key priorities for improving local cancer services in north east London over the next year and beyond. A diverse mix of organisations took part, including NHS England, NHS North East London, Primary Care, Secondary Care, Charities, Public Health, Local Authorities and Healthwatch.

Angela Wong, Chief Medical Officer for North East London Cancer Alliance, said “It was vital for us to share our plans with all our cancer partners, and to provide the opportunity for us to come together to build relationships, generate ideas and inspire future work. This event has really achieved these aims – and much more – which will help us to deliver an even better service for our patients.”

Another key purpose of the event was to showcase our recent achievements in improving cancer care, helping to recognise the hard work of our cancer staff. Professor Charles Knight OBE, Chair of the Cancer Alliance Board and Chief Executive of St Bartholomew’s Hospital, provided examples of successes across each of our programmes.

These included our award-winning womb cancer awareness campaign, called ‘You Need to Know’, our collaborative improvements to Multi-Disciplinary Team Meetings, and our life-changing work on prehabilitation.

We also heard from our patients in a passionate and moving video, which can be viewed here: https://youtu.be/yQV5JzV0-lQ

A man and a woman are standing at the front of a large conference centre giving a presentation. The audience are seated at round tables.

A national and regional perspective

David Fitzgerald, Director of Policy and Strategy, NHS Cancer Programme, NHS England, provided a compelling overview of the national cancer picture, highlighting the focus on early diagnosis and the target that, by 2028, 75% of cancers will be diagnosed at stage 1 or 2, when they are easier to treat.

He provided an update on how successful the Targeted Lung Health Check Programme has been in moving us towards this target and, in particular, thanked us in north east London for our work on this.

In the afternoon, James Moore, Director of Improvement for NHS England, London and Sue Maughan, Deputy Director Cancer for NHS England, London, did a great double act in talking through the exciting work going on at a London level, as well as thanking everyone in north east London for all their hard work to date.

Insights in north east London

We also took a closer look at our local population. Matthew Cole, Director of Public Health, London Borough of Barking and Dagenham and Chair of the Early Diagnosis Programme Delivery Group for the North East London Cancer Alliance, delivered a fascinating and thought-provoking presentation on our demographics.

He talked about a potential future shift in cancer diagnosis and tumour groups, partly due to the older population having worked more in industrial settings, which has historically resulted in more cases of certain cancer types. This is likely to shift over time, where other factors come in to play such as lifestyle and diet.

He also highlighted the need to reach out to the 20–40 year-old population range – the largest population range in some of our boroughs - if we really want to hit our early diagnosis targets.

Completing the picture in north east London, we heard from the North East London Integrated Care Board (NEL ICB) Chief Medical Officer, Paul Gilluley, who shared a couple of very interesting personal stories as he talked through how the cancer work links into the NEL ICB priorities of Employment and Workforce, Long Term Conditions, Children and Young People, and Mental Health.

A focus on Primary and Secondary Care

Rob Palmer, GP Chair for the North East London Cancer Alliance, talked about the important work going on in primary care and how this is supporting residents and cancer patients in north east London. From encouraging uptake in screening programmes to education and training, Rob covered a range of initiatives to help GPs in north east London.

Our three providers – Barts Health, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust (BHRUT) and Homerton Healthcare – provided the perfect end to a packed agenda by showing an impressive array of innovations taking place in hospitals to support cancer patients. There could have been a whole conference dedicated to just this section!

Sas Banerjee, London Endoscopy Clinical Director (NHSE/I - London) and Cancer Clinical Lead for BHRUT, and Janet Robinson, Cancer Lead for BHRUT, upped the tempo with an engaging, fun and impressive update on a few of the many initiatives underway, such as Community Diagnostic Centres, Cytosponge, Liver Surveillance and use of the FIT test for bowel cancer in secondary care.

Ranjit Manchanda, Professor of Gynaecological Oncology & Consultant (Honorary) Gynaecological Oncologist, led a thrilling talk about the impressive work going on in Barts Health to improve survival rates from ovarian cancer, as well as providing invaluable insight into BRCA testing in the Jewish community to help spot the risk of cancer.

Angshu Bowmik, Lead Cancer Clinician, Homerton Healthcare, completed the update from secondary care, telling us about the excellent progress being made in prehabilitation, best practice timed-pathways, lung cancer and teledermatology.

Looking ahead

Femi Odewale, Managing Director of North East London Cancer Alliance, said “This event has served as a timely reminder of just how much we have achieved through the talent, knowledge and experience we have in our cancer teams. This puts us in a great position to deliver a challenging, yet achievable, schedule of work over the next year.

“I’m personally excited about the positive impact this will have on our residents, as we make even more progress in closing the health inequalities gap. Whilst it has been important to take a look at what the teams have achieved, we need to build on this and work more closely together with all partners in cancer care.

“We are already planning next year’s Partnership Forum and we are looking forward to showing all those who work in cancer care across the globe what we can achieve’.