Trialling suggested deadlines on bowel screening invitations to increase participation

Lead researcher: Professor Mark Lawler and Dr Ethna McFerran 

Location: Queen’s University Belfast 

Grant award: £24,727 

Professor Lawler and Dr McFerran are testing if adding a deadline to the letter sent out with bowel screening can increase participation in screening programmes.

The challenge 

Bowel cancer screening saves lives, as it can detect bowel cancers at an earlier stage when treatment is more effective. It can also find precancerous polyps (non-cancerous growths) that can then be removed before they develop into a cancer. 

It’s important that everyone eligible for screening takes part when invited. However, most people say they want to do their screening test, but fewer than 7 in 10 complete it. Screening uptake is also lower in areas with higher deprivation.

The science behind the project 

Professor Lawler’s team will be trialling the impact of adding suggested deadlines for completion to screening invitation letters. They’ll be looking at how many people complete the kits who get the letter with the deadline, compared to those who get the normal letter.

The study will be carried out in Northern Ireland, which has the lowest bowel screening uptake in the UK., It’ll focus on the areas with the highest deprivation. 

Follow-up work using questionnaires and interviews will give more understanding of peoples’ experiences, motivations and barriers related to bowel screening. 

What difference will this project make? 

We always want new approaches to improve screening uptake, so more people with bowel cancer can be diagnosed at the earliest stages. They’ll be looking at how many people complete the kits. Comparing the number of kits completed by those who got the letter with the deadline, and those who got the normal letter. If the letters with the deadline prove to be an effective way of getting people to take their test, this change could be expanded across the screening process.

By running this study in areas with low screening uptake, it’ll mean that any change that comes out of this project will have the best chance of addressing the current health inequalities seen in bowel screening. 

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