E-poster Presentation 2014 World Cancer Congress

Conducting a cancer awareness campaign - Subject based strategies (#854)

Mohan S. Kumar 1
  1. M.S.Ramaiah Medical College, Bangalore, KA, India

Background and Context: 

 Campaigning is an organized and coordinated activities carried out to achieve a

political, a social or a commercial goal. Cancer awareness campaign should be done for a social cause to bring awareness about the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer.

Aim:

The aim of cancer awareness campaign is to bring down the incidence of cancer and its consequences. The main objective is to give information about the cause, prevention, diagnosis and treatment of cancer. Cancer awareness campaign should motivate the people to quit tobacco and alcohol, encourage them to participate in cancer screening , cancer vaccination and genetic counseling if there is history of familial cancers.

Strategy/Tactics:

Components of Cancer Awareness Campaign are: 

Campaign planning, Campaign Development, Campaign Execution, Campaign Monitoring, and Campaign Measurement

 Cancer awareness campaigns should be customized based on the target population and campaigning methods should be developed in simple and cost effective manner.

Programme/Policy Process:

Target Subjects

Method of campaigning

General Public   

Posters, Street play, Marathon Running, Newspaper ,Radio, Television and Social media

Students 

Guest lectures, Exhibitions , Projects , Essay writing competition

Health Workers 

Seminars, Panel Discussion, Workshops

Political Leaders

Statistics of the cancer Burden and available facilities , Legal implementation on tobacco, alcohol and pollution control

Industrialists and investors

Seminars about the scope of investment in hospitals, pharmacy and radiotherapy

Outcomes/What was learned: Time to time monitoring of campaigns should be done by trained health workers and social workers. The impact of the campaign can be measured on short term basis by looking at the number of people participating in cancer screening, cancer vaccination and number of people taking oath to quit tobacco. Long term effect of Cancer awareness campaigns can be measured by looking at the hospital registries about incidence of cancer and number of cases detected in early stages