Researching women’s views on ‘personalised’ risk for breast cancer.

Personalised breast cancer screening

Nowgen is part of a team developing a qualitative study that will look at how women view potential change to an established breast cancer screening programme. We are working with medical researchers, a health psychologist and a consultant genetic counsellor to plan this study. Dr Marisha Palm is the main researcher working on this project from Nowgen.

At Nowgen, we believe that it is important to consult the public about changes to health services and to consider their views on the best way of implementing changes. The project that is being developed focuses on the implementation of a new system of more accurate individual risk profiling. This project would complement an ongoing NIHR programme grant. 

In preparation for this study, Nowgen held an event where members of the public were invited to attend the Nightingale and Genesis Centre in Manchester. This centre is Europe’s first purpose-built breast cancer prevention facility. Sixteen women attended and they were asked about their understanding of the risk factors related to breast cancer and their views on possible changes to the current screening programme. The women who attended had good knowledge of the different risk factors involved, but were very interested in finding out more. They were interested in thinking about how screening services might potentially change, but would generally want more screening available, and were concerned about any decrease in the frequency of screening.