Vibrant music, delicious food and essential health advice at the Barking Afro Caribbean community event

Written by: Paul Thomas

11/03/2024

There was a party atmosphere and a true taste of the Caribbean at Barking & Dagenham’s latest health pop-up clinic for the Afro Caribbean community, which took place on 7 March at the Barking Learning Centre.

A whole host of community and health partners were on hand to support over 400 local residents who attend the event, which was organised by Thames Life Community Development Trust. The team from The Source served up an amazing array of free, delicious dishes, and there was even a DJ who got people on the dance floor to some funky tunes.

North East London Cancer Alliance teamed up with NHS North East London, Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust, NELFT NHS Foundation Trust to help provide essential health advice.

Paul Thomas, Communications and Engagement Manager for North East London Cancer Alliance said “We were able to speak to over 60 people from the Black African and Caribbean community at our information stand about cancer screening and signs and symptoms, which is a fantastic outcome.

“The majority of questions were about either breast cancer or prostate cancer. In answering these enquiries, we hope to have helped increase the uptake of cancer screening amongst this community and raised awareness of the importance of checking for cancer early.

“Dr Jagan John provided an informative talk on prostate cancer and encouraged more people to come and visit our stand, which had a big impact and generated lots of interest – so much so that we nearly ran out of our cancer leaflets!”

The organisers showed North East London Cancer Alliance’s latest video on prostate cancer on the big screen in the main room, which also helped to generate more interest. The video talked about the risk of prostate cancer in the black community. Data shows that 1 in 4 black men are likely to get prostate cancer, compared to 1 in 8 white men.

The video can be viewed on YouTube.