As stated under “Patient Support” and the “Amber Care Centre”, we believe that raising awareness about cancer is one of the main goals of PCRF and the first step in beating cancer! Raising awareness involves helping people
- make healthy living choices,
- adopt the fundamental principle that early detection saves lives and
- become aware of the various options available to them at all times.
In raising awareness, we believe in a bottom-up approach by working with young people as much and as frequently and interactively as possible.
Outreach
The PCRF scientists, in particular Professor Djamgoz, give their time generously to outreach on several different fronts. The following are some examples of our outreach activities:
- visits to schools to meet and talk to pupils and their parents,
- schools visiting the laboratories at Imperial College to learn about cancer, research on cancer, how new drugs are developed etc.,
- visits to patient groups,
- talks at fundraising events, and
- presentations at nursing and other professional conferences.
Recent projects
14th March 2016
An interactive experiential workshop with women from Day-Mer about early detection and making healthier lifestyle choices.
How To Use The Internet
In seeking “awareness”, invariably people will also use the internet, so the question comes up – how do you decide what to believe and trust? Here, we offer 3 criteria to help make such decisions:
- How old is the information on offer? Cancer is a fast-moving field and information can quickly become outdated.
- Has the information been peer-reviewed? Anyone can write anything they like on the internet. For such information to be correct, it must have gone through an evaluation process by experts, deemed acceptable and published in a reputable scientific or medical journal, such as the Lancet or the British Medical Journal.
- Has the same information been reported by others? This is another golden rule of scientific integrity – unless somebody’s result or information has be replicated by an independent expert (ideally more than one), it cannot be accepted as true!
In conclusion, before taking information on the internet seriously, one should make sure that these criteria are obeyed!