A series of All Our Health (AOH) resources have been developed to help health and care practitioners use their knowledge, skills and relationships to prevent illness, improve health outcomes and reduce health inequalities.
The AOH screening e-learning resource offers support to health practitioners in reducing inequalities in screening, offering informed choices across the screening programmes and sharing best practice.
The PHE screening team has contributed this interactive module to the wider AOH population screening resource. This resource gives all health and care practitioners an overview of population screening to enable them to:
- understand specific activities and interventions that can support population screening
- think about the resources and services available in their area that can help people access local screening services
- find information about the NHS screening programmes
- support people to make the right screening choices for them
Professor Jamie Waterall, Deputy Chief Nurse and Director of PHE’s All Our Health programme said:
This excellent new resource is one of the most important sessions that we now have on the All Our Health platform. I would strongly encourage all health and care professionals to take a look at this free resource as the information is relevant to everyone.
Screening overview
Screening is the process of identifying healthy people who may have an increased chance of having a disease or condition, enabling effective treatment. Screening programmes can improve health and save thousands of lives each year.
Every year the NHS offers bowel, breast and cervical cancer screening, antenatal and newborn (ANNB) screening, abdominal aortic aneurysm (AAA) screening and diabetic eye screening (DES) to millions of people.
Screening is a choice and individuals are offered information to help them decide if they wish to accept the offer of screening.
While screening is offered to everyone who is eligible, certain groups are less likely to accept it. Often, those who would benefit most are least likely to accept screening.
Health and care practitioners have an important role in supporting people to get accurate, up-to-date information in a language and format they can understand so they can make the right screening choices for them. Also, if an individual has taken up an offer of screening, they can support by:
- checking the screening process has been completed
- helping to explain screening results
- encouraging attendance at any follow-up appointments
PHE Screening blog
The PHE Screening blog provides up to date news from all NHS screening programmes. You can register to receive updates direct to your inbox, so there’s no need to keep checking for new blogs. If you have any questions about this blog article, or about population screening in England, please contact the PHE screening helpdesk.