West Midlands Cervical Screening Programme

Current Developments

West Midlands Cervical Screening Coverage Campaign

Primary Care Trusts across the West Midlands are continuing the three year regional cervical screening promotional campaign, "What's pants, but can save your life?". The overall aim is to increase regional coverage across all ages, but specifically targeting women aged 25-29. An increase of at least 12% would raise regional coverage figures for this age group above the national minimum standard of 80%.

The degree of the problem and the specific problems arising vary greatly between West Midlands PCTs. Therefore each PCT has planned local initiatives according to their local requirements taking cultural, geographical and other community issues into consideration.

Individual PCT plans were co-ordinated to coincide with the launch of the overarching region wide advertising/awareness campaign. Click here to view the advertising materials.

A website is also available for women to access further information about cervical screening and about additional local health clinics in the West Midlands which offer cervical screening. To access this website go to www.pants.nhs.uk

The regional campaign features in the National Social Marketing Centre showcase of social marketing case studies.

The overall effectiveness of the combined approach will be monitored and evaluated by the West Midlands Cervical Screening QA Reference Centre.

Guidance

The West Midlands QA Reference Centre has recently published regional guidance for managing and auditing cervical cytology sample discrepancies. This guidance details the minimum requirements for the processing and auditing of cervical samples which have been submitted incorrectly to cytology laboratories in order to address any problems in the local sample taking process and so reduce the risk of potential incidents. Click here to view the document.

Factsheets

Click here to view the West Midlands Cervical Screening Programme Factsheet series.