A review of existing evidence supports the need for us to better understand factors affecting the time it takes for a child or young person with cancer to be diagnosed. For example, children in the UK with a Wilms’ tumour, a type of childhood kidney cancer, have larger and more advanced tumours at diagnosis compared with children in other European countries. There are likely to be many reasons for this, with lack of awareness playing a key role.
HeadSmart, an evidence-based national awareness campaign led by the Children’s Brain Tumour Research Centre and the Brain Tumour Charity has halved diagnosis times for children with brain tumours in the UK. We now hope to replicate this success for all other cancers affecting children and young people.
Child Cancer Smart will help us to measure and understand the time it takes to diagnose children and young people with all cancers across the UK. The project will also start to address delays by developing high quality guidance on cancers in children and young people, and produce awareness tools for a national awareness campaign to promote earlier diagnosis.