Cancer strategy 2023 to 2033
This Cancer strategy for Scotland sets out our vision for the next ten years to improve cancer survival and provide excellent, equitably accessible care. It was developed in collaboration with people with lived experience and our wider partners.
Appendix 3: Development of the Strategy
The development of this new strategy began in the first quarter of 2022 looking at what the scope should be, in terms of breadth of topics as well as timelines. The vision and aims for the strategy were considered along with the principles that would underlie our strategic outlook. These early ideas were put out to consultation from April to June 2022 bringing in 257 responses from individuals and organisations including the general public, frontline workers and managers, the private sector and the third sector.
Analysis of these responses showed general agreement with what was proposed with additional suggestions.[30]
Recurrent themes were:
- Ensuring equal access – tackling unequal access driven by one’s place of residence and socio-economic status
- Prevention – promoting healthier lifestyles and raising cancer awareness
- Facilitating earlier diagnosis
- Person-centred approach – placing the people with cancer and their cancer journey experiences at the centre of the new cancer strategy
- Research and innovation – respondents reflected repeatedly on the need to conduct more research so that innovative treatments and evidence-based approaches to care can be made available to people with cancer
- Workforce support – responses acknowledged the efforts and commitment of the workforce, but mentioned that the workforce needs greater support by;
- recruiting more staff and professionals with expertise currently missing
- providing the workforce with more training opportunities to improve skills
- making provisions for the emotional support of staff in cancer care
- Secondary, rare and less survivable cancers
- Survival – improved survival has received large agreement as a key aim.
We discussed these issues further at a series of roundtable focus groups over September and October, meeting with over 20 people with lived experience of cancer. We had regular engagement with the Third Sector through the Scottish Cancer Coalition and through two focus groups. These confirmed the main findings of the consultation but some new themes, issues and nuances emerged, which were taken into account in the drafting of the strategy.
Views of clinical and service providers were obtained through the public consultation and through regular engagement with our cancer networks, experts and governance groups.
Contact
Email: cancerpolicyteam@gov.scot
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