Health Screening

Supporting you to implement & improve of your programmes

Effective screening can help save lives and improve the quality of life through the early diagnosis and treatment of serious conditions. Screening presents different challenges to clinical practice as it is about targeting apparently healthy people from a large population in order to detect a small number of people who are affected.
We have expertise in evidence review, preparation of guidance, co-ordination, commissioning and quality assurance of formal NHS Screening programmes in the UK and national programmes abroad.

We are currently carrying out a systematic review and meta-analysis of the effectiveness of interventions designed to improve participation, amongst under-served population groups, in national screening programmes in the UK. This review is registered on PROSPERO and the protocol is available here: Protocol for Systematic Review

 

What we do

  • Review the evidence base for potential new national screening programmes in the UK and abroad
  • Develop guidance about how to set up formal screening programmes in the UK and abroad
  • Develop and monitor Key Performance Indicators for screening programmes
  • Support the development and implementation of health screening quality assurance programmes
  • Offer engagement events to providers to explore improvements to the screening pathway

Please get in touch via our contact page.

Case Studies

Improving allocative value decision-making in the stroke pathway (STAR tool)

The Mid and South Essex stroke stewardship group wanted to better understand which of the interventions they delivered were high value and which were low value to inform decision-making on use of resources and investment. Arden & GEM’s Healthcare Solutions team provided training and support to enable the group to use the Socio-Technical Allocation of Resources (STAR) process in value based decision-making. As a result, the MSE stroke stewardship group has the insight needed to improve the allocation of their existing resources and improve outcomes for their patients. SPH were part of the project team, conducting a librarian review of economic evidence relating to cost-effectiveness of the stroke interventions to feed into the first workshop. This comprised a review of existing economic cost-effectiveness assessments (ideally by NICE as these are recognised as the guiding authority within the NHS). Where an economic assessment had not been undertaken then this was noted for further consideration. More detail here

Health Needs Assessment for Children & Young People

SPH carried out a Health Needs Assessment for a local authority that was recommissioning its Healthy Child Programme (HCP). The purpose was to review whether existing provision and service configuration of the HCP was meeting the needs of children and young people in the county, and to identify gaps and potential options for improvement. This is a preventative programme which includes Health Visiting and School Nursing Services, Family Nurse Partnership (FNP) Programme and healthy start vouchers and vitamins, linking with childhood immunisation services, community paediatrics, speech and language, services for children with a learning disability and complex needs and child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS), among others. The HNA was carried out jointly by SPH and the local authority, with the epidemiological needs assessment and service description provided by the local authority. The report was compiled using a range of publicly available and locally collected epidemiological and service use data. In addition, SPH carried out a consultation of key corporate stakeholders as well as children and young people, their parents and carers. This included semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders in a range of organisations, a survey of a wider range of staff who work with children and young people and a survey of children and young people, their parents and cares which was distributed through the services.

Screening programmes; commissioning and co-ordination

Between 2002 and the NHS re-structure in 2013, SPH provided commissioning and public health support and advice to the commissioners of all cancer and non-cancer screening programmes across one region, including nine cancer screening programmes, two Diabetic Eye screening programmes and one Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm screening programme. SPH also supported all antenatal and new-born screening programmes in up to four NHS hospital trusts over an 11-year period. The types of activity that SPH undertook for this work included:
  • Supporting commissioners to meet the requirements and standards of national and local service specifications
  • Ensuring that all screening programme contracts are monitored regularly and action plans implemented where necessary to recover performance
  • Providing public health advice and expertise to commissioners and screening programmes about national and local policies, standards and pathways
  • Co-ordination of all relevant service providers along the screening pathway to support performance management of programmes
  • Identifying differences in access to screening programmes and developing actions to address them
  • Responding to enquiries from stakeholders
  • Participating in the investigation of serious untoward incidents and putting systems in place to ensure they are not repeated
  • Identifying and disseminating best practice
More case studies >
Testimonials