To reduce late-stage cancer diagnosis, we need to support people to attend cancer screening and encourage people to talk to their GP about any unusual symptoms they experience.
Our public campaigns play a vital role in encouraging behaviour change by increasing awareness of cancer symptoms, promoting screening, and reducing barriers to help-seeking.
To support this work, we provide healthcare professionals with timely campaign updates, key messages and practical resources to help reinforce campaign activity and support patients to take action for their health.
Discover our campaign activity across the UK nations below.
Campaigns in England
Early diagnosis public marketing activity is run by NHS England through its Help Us Help You campaigns. We have previously supported raising awareness among healthcare professionals about these campaigns to ensure they are prepared.
We’ve worked with the Public Health Agency to produce cancer awareness campaigns which meet the needs of Northern Ireland.
In February to March 2025, we delivered a cancer screening campaign to encourage eligible people to take part in the bowel, breast, and cervical screening programmes.
Earlier this year, we delivered a Scottish bowel screening campaign alongside NHS Scotland and the Scottish Government and supported awareness of the 2025 Scottish Referral Guidelines for Suspected Cancer among healthcare professionals. We’ve amplified national campaigns such as ‘Detect Cancer Early’ and ‘Be the Early Bird’ through newsletters and social media.
We support cancer symptom awareness campaigns in Wales to encourage help-seeking and drive the earlier diagnosis of cancer. In May 2025, we focused on the earlier diagnosis of lung cancer with a campaign to raise awareness of symptoms and encourage help-seeking among people aged over 50 living in more deprived areas.
Our bespoke GP newsletter provides information on prevention and early diagnosis, including best-practice guidance, practical tools, expert resources, and news about our public-facing health campaigns.
All campaigns are planned in partnership with the relevant national health system with stakeholder input. During campaigns, GP practices may experience a slight increase in the number of people presenting with symptoms or questions about cancer screening. There may also be an impact on secondary care services. Whilst we can’t predict the scale of the impact for individual campaigns, evaluations of previous campaigns suggest it’s usually minimal.
You can find a range of patient and healthcare professional resources to download or order for free from our Publications page. Displaying leaflets can ensure your patients stay informed and raise awareness of symptoms and screening programmes.
We use a range of evaluation methods to assess the reach, engagement and impact of our campaigns. All campaigns include pre- and post-campaign evaluation to help us understand how awareness, attitudes and behaviours may have changed among our target audiences.
Depending on the campaign, this may include measuring awareness and understanding of campaign messages, engagement with campaign content, website activity, and, where possible, any impact on healthcare services.
The findings help us understand the effectiveness of our campaigns, identify opportunities for improvement, and inform the development of future activity to support earlier cancer diagnosis.
You can find a range of patient and healthcare professional resources to download or order for free on our resources page. Displaying leaflets can ensure your patients stay informed and raise awareness of symptoms and screening programmes.
Addressing health inequalities is a key consideration throughout the development and delivery of our campaigns. We draw on the latest evidence and insights to identify groups who may be disproportionately affected by cancer, experience poorer outcomes, or face barriers to help-seeking and screening participation.
For cancer symptoms campaigns, we often focus on people aged 50 and over as they are more likely to experience barriers to earlier diagnosis. For screening campaigns, we focus on people who are eligible for the relevant programme, while also considering groups with lower screening uptake.
Our longer-term campaign strategy seeks to address the underlying barriers that contribute to inequalities in cancer outcomes, including awareness, fear, fatalism, and access to information.
We also work to ensure our campaign materials are accessible and inclusive, providing resources in a range of formats, including Easy Read leaflets and British Sign Language (BSL) content, to help reach diverse audiences.
Where possible, we evaluate campaign performance across different audience groups to understand reach and identify opportunities to further reduce inequalities in cancer awareness, help-seeking and screening participation.
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