Cancer incidence is predicted to rise, and over the span of the ten-year health plan nearly four million people are expected to be diagnosed with cancer. Every year, 33,000 cancer cases are directly attributable to deprivation, and wider inequalities contribute to high levels of late-stage diagnosis, when prognoses are worse.

Integrated care systems (ICSs) have legal responsibilities to reduce health inequalities and Cancer Research UK holds exceptional knowledge about measures ICSs can put in place to address this. Our session will explore the ways ICS leaders can address health inequalities across prevention, early diagnosis, recognition and referral, and access to treatment. We will explain how this can apply in the context of the three broad shifts laid out in the government’s NHS agenda, and how systems can realise broad population health objectives by thinking through the cancer lens, before looking at best practice examples. We have multiple potential case studies that we could bring, but have initially identified the following as potential focus areas:

• Improving bowel cancer diagnosis among people with learning disabilities across the Wessex system.
• Using local data to develop strategies for improving early diagnosis among local populations across the East Midlands and Greater Manchester.