The worst cervical cancer campaign ever...

[PizzazzRoxyStorma]

...well isn't this one special?

https://x.com/northwestcancer/status/1724378139059503400?s=46&t=FvzNePXGikWIJeOA86F8cg

How is a 'cheeky and playful' campaign supposed to encourage women ? It's infantising. Also what's with all the empowering BS ? It's condescending.

I think the whole thing needs an overhaul starting with not harassing women when they go in for unrelated medical issues.

They need to guarantee a female will do it, have appointments or dedicated drop in clinics for women who have trauma, pain or any other barrier, where they can go and meet the nurse, talk about it with no pressure to actually do it (like some dentists do).
It needs to be emphasised that it will be private and the woman will be listened to and in control the whole time.
Recognition that the test might not even be worth it for some women (screening is not supposed to cause further harm) with no more 'but you might die'.

There should also be out of hours and easy availability for women who aren't particularly bothered by the actual experience but have no time, lead busy lives, can't get an appointment and quite frankly just push it to the bottom of their to do lists.

Also some sort of recognition that a lot of women are questioning it's efficacy when all they do now is test for the HPV virus and not cell changes.

I know it's a stupid question, but if you can get a home test for HPV from Superdrug ( which I didn't know) why do you still need a smear test if it is now for HPV only and not abnormal cells?

If there was some kind of home test I would do it.
I can't cope with a stranger and an intimate procedure, and the minimising of that fear.

You can indeed get a home test from Superdrug, it costs about 50 quid and gives some peace of mind if you’re not having cervical screening. Obviously if you came back HPV positive you’d need further investigation. As I understand it, when you go for a smear test, they now throw your sample in the bin if it’s HPV negative. They only examine the cells properly if the sample is HPV positive. So for me, it’s Superdrug all the way these days. I ordered it online and got my results very quickly.

It's not a stupid question.

These days the lab checks the sample for particular strains of HPV, and then, if the strains are present, the sample is checked for abnormal cell changes.

I assume it's like that because they think it's more efficient than administering HPV tests and then recalling women whose samples are positive for HPV, to screen them for abnormal cells.

Mostly they think that because they don't listen to women.

FFS they could do SO much better if they weren't shit. Nervous women would be fine with a quick self-administered test. And them they'd have fewer smears to do and therefore could target resources, book better and take more time.

Thank you @CorruptedCauldron and @NeighbourhoodWatchPotholeDivision and @MrsTerryPratchett
I've learned so more on this thread than from my GP surgery.
I'm sure I can manage to do a Superdrug test on myself, and then see how it comes back. So for me, that's a step forward. Thank goodness for the women on here!

Sometimes I feel like the aim is to make as many women suffer as possible. For years, women tried to raise awareness that cell changes in young women were most likely benign if they didn't have HPV, and that the screening programme led to unnecessary interventions on women who wouldn't have developed cancer.

Now the NHS explains all that on its official websites. But we're still expected to submit ourselves to an unchanged, painful screening process. The only concession to the new awareness that it's HPV that is the signifier? They throw away the samples at the lab that don't test positive for it.

Yes, it’s crazy that unnecessary, time-wasting, invasive tests are still being carried out with no thought as to what would be more comfortable for the women involved. Good luck with Superdrug, Clabony!

Thanks CC. I'm sure there are quite a number of women who would do a self administered test who would not go for a smear with strangers.

Perhaps one of these organisations might spend some money looking at the possibilities at some point. Instead of that humiliating and ridiculous installation.

I think it's a good campaign. Rightly or wrongly, it's got people talking. Thus, raising awareness of cervical screening.

FFS. Talking about their trauma and how this ad has been useless? You honestly think that those actions have delivered the objective of the campaign?

Or is this another mindless ‘there is no such thing as bad publicity’ appeal to falsity?

So… I’m wondering now… after many years of smears, does someone somewhere know if I’m HPV negative? Can I find out?

I’m not sexually active, so could avoid future smears if I’m HPVn- right now?

Could you set a lower bar?

if someone decides to carry out some sort of dreadful massacre in the name of a cause, it’ll ’get people talking’ and ‘raise awareness’ of their cause. Does that sound like a good outcome? Is that ‘awareness raising’ helpful?

It’s not true that all publicity is good publicity. Poorly judged comms campaigns can, and often do, make things worse.

Have you actually read any of the posts on here from those of us this has upset due to past trauma? Saying how this meant we won’t ever go for the test again? And that’s just on this thread, magnify the number throughout the country this has upset. Is that a good campaign?

edit to add, what happened to me was not physical abuse but was enough to put me off smears. Last night I dreamt of those plastic legs in the advert, and that GP saying “lovely legs, lovely legs” and spent most of the night reading instead of sleeping. I can only imagine how abuse survivors feel seeing the advert and I really hope this isn’t the final straw for anybody struggling.

It looks like the Superdrug test could tell you. I might get one myself.

Just like people are talking about Endometriosis South Coast?

How is having your cancer research charity associated with a deeply polarized message any type of positive outcome?

That is the antithesis of successful campaign.

I cannot imagine being the campaign lead in that one, standing up in front of the board and saying ‘yes, it was a great success! We got 60 media mentions, the most we ever have achieved! We estimate that we go 705 million people seeing the campaign! We had 2000 emails sent in. The NHS saw no discernible increase in appointments being kept or made.’

Then the chair of the board asks about the negative publicity they saw some reports of and the campaign lead admits that of the 60 media mentions, 40 were negative mentions, and that the majority of the views countered were from negative social media mentions.

But oh… it was successful! People now know the name of the charity!!! That is raising awareness.

Whereas, I suspect that in the wrap up of the communications media ‘campaigns of the year’ this may be mentioned under ‘most divisive communications fails for 2023’. And ‘Influential’ will be desperately trying to rely on their previous work to hide this campaign.

A campaign in what is supposedly a more enlightened era where women’s trauma is not dismissed or used against them by those privileged not to be triggered by the campaign. But yay!!! Awareness!!! Am I right?

Its awful @UnremarkableBeasts and I'm sorry you had a horrid experience with the GP. We had a similar thing a few weeks ago when my son tried to get help; GP didn't want to know, ambulance service said they were too busy to come out and drop in centre told him he had to make an appointment. He was too ill to wait so had to go to A&E where he was treated for a serious infection. Thankfully we've prevented a situation from escalating but the whole system is horrific. As for smear tests, why on earth are we being coerced/pressed like this, are our bodies not our own?

HPV can lie dormant for years - and when domant it can't be detected by the test. A negative test now doesn't mean that you don't have it or that it won't 'activate' and cause problems in future.

Personally I've always thought that health care professionals - and I'm talking about basically most of the female doctors and nurses who have given me smears - need to be trained to administer smears gently.

I've had large speculums inserted when actually a smaller would do. There's ways of having a gentle touch. I do feel that patients are treated a bit like cattle at times - having had my fair share of canulas inserted and blood taken, this heavy-handedness is everywhere.

This message 'uncross your legs' reinforces that mentality I think.

Yes Empress! Exactly like that.

In fact, if I were redoing my studies I would be asking my lecturers about how this spread of the myth of ‘no such thing as bad publicity’ has got so far. Because from experience it comes down to a very few cases where a marketing team could turn a deeply negative result into a positive.

I think most unthinking people associate it with superficial actions like when someone posts something negative that reflects very poorly on the person posting and the organisation being maligned can respond with grace and can turn it into a positive experience for all. Or for when a campaign goes off the rails but it is salvageable in some way. Or organisations have big enough budgets and reach to quickly do something that distracts.

South Cost Endometriosis now is known for being an trans activist charity and not women centred, and this charity NWCR may end up being known as the cancer research organisation that hates women. Both of these results will take a very long time to regain trust and will require budget that they cannot spare and perhaps directional change of leaders. (Ie team leaders being replaced )

Certainly any organisation needing women to trust them will never breezily state ‘no such thing as bad publicity’. But it seems there are some people who really are hard of thinking.

There should be some sort of public service that detects anyone claiming 'no such thing as bad publicity' and sends Gerald Ratner round for a chat.

But oh… it was successful! People now know the name of the charity!!! That is raising awareness.

This frankly unpleasant, dehumanised and cynical marketing approach is currently beloved of corporate retail. Who don't care about anything more than the name of the product spreading, and impacting sales.

It is a truly stupid idea to embrace it for a charity supposedly working for the trust and engagement of women in cervical smears. Unless of course, the charity sees itself largely as a corporate retailer and is focused only on sales and money generation, and is not remotely interested in women or the work they were created to do.

It would be a problem common to almost all now of the large charities, and a reason I will now only donate to small, local charities whose only interest is in their cause, not in growing their empire, income and personal paychecks.

Um. Look. <tries to find words>

This is a hasty generalisation, but there may be two main groups of women who don't attend screening programmes.

The first group aren't going because they're not fully aware what a cervix is, where it is, or who has one. One reason might be that they speak English as an additional language. So that's a language barrier.

Another reason might be that they received a poor education despite being native English speakers. I once had a young adult woman, who had not been allowed to attend state education past primary school, ask me if women could get pregnant from oral sex acts on a man if they swallowed semen. Careful questioning revealed that her understanding of pregnancy had not developed beyond "the baby grows in its mother's tummy for nine months". She quite literally thought a pregnant woman had the baby in her stomach, so it made sense to her that swallowing semen could also result in conception. If you think she knew what a cervix was, you're off your rocker.

A third reason might be because they have learning disabilities; the screening rates for women with learning disabilities are much lower than for women without learning disabilities, across all types of screening. In one set of statistics, for 2014-2015, the cervical cancer screening rate for eligible women with LDs was less than half of the rate for women without LDS; only 30.2% of eligible women aged between 25-34 with LDs were screened for cervical cancer, compared with over 70% of eligible women in the same age group without LDs. This isn't a benign statistical quirk to be ignored, because women with learning disabilities also have a life expectancy that is 18 years lower than unaffected women.

The pat answer here will be "well awareness raising will help those women then! Isn't this campaign brilliant!"

If you're about to take anything I've typed so far as an endorsement of this installation, look at the photo in the OP again. After that, consider this form of phrasing from North West Cancer:

Almost 1 in 3 people aged 25-49 in the North West don’t attend their cervical screening. Yet our cervical cancer rates are 19% higher than the rest of England. Screening helps lower your chances of getting cervical cancer. That’s why it's so important to not leave your risk of developing cervical cancer to chance.

If you don't already know what a cervix is, where it is, or who has one, what has this installation done to inform you? How has it increased your personal awareness?

Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if some people looked at that and concluded that "cervical cancer" affected the legs.

Now I will move on to the second group of women who don't engage with the screening programme. They do know where a cervix is and who has one: that's why they're not booking appointments to have a screening. Perhaps they have already experienced painful or traumatic screenings, or perhaps they have good reason to expect that any future one will be painful or traumatic.

Either way, they have plenty of awareness already.

What they need is reassurance that they will be taken seriously and treated with respect during an appointment. They want confirmations that they will be treated with gentleness and compassion; promises that the nurse or other HCP won't be dismissive. In short, adverts for screening need to build trust with prospective patients.

This installation provides none of the above. Its "jokey and cheeky" approach is actually counter-productive; in fact, it encapsulates the dismissive attitude to women's pain and discomfort that has led to so many women refusing to ever have another cervical screening test!

Very well explained.