The campaign – supported by leading charity Breast Cancer Now – launches with a new advert across TV, radio and online to highlight that screening can detect any cancers as early as possible.
New NHS estimates suggest that if screening attendance could be improved to 80% of those eligible next year (2025/26), nearly a million more women (around 925,000) could be screened, compared to 2022/23 – with more than 7,500 additional breast cancers detected at an earlier stage, when they are more treatable.
The campaign sees celebrities including Newsnight anchor Victoria Derbyshire, broadcaster and presenter Julia Bradbury, and Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas write ‘unofficial' invitation letters to women about their personal experiences of screening to reassure them and encourage them to attend. They are joined by cancer survivors, NHS staff and TV doctors in sharing letters in a number of films.
The campaign comes as a new survey of 2,000 women for the NHS showed that almost 40% rarely or never talk about breast screening with their female friends and families, and 24% of women said they wouldn't attend if they didn't already have symptoms like a lump.
More than a fifth (21%) also said that embarrassment at being topless in front of someone would prevent them from attending. Concerns about screening being painful (18.5%) also feature. However, 83.2% said they would attend breast screening if they were invited.
NHS national cancer director, Dame Cally Palmer, said: ‘We know for many women there can be lots of reasons why they might be reluctant to come forward, or why it's not top of the priority list in their very busy lives. That's why the NHS has today launched its first-ever campaign to support more women to make the most of breast screening and to address some of the misgivings and misconceptions they might have.'
Dr Louise Wilkinson, NHS national speciality advisor for breast screening, added: ‘It's incredibly important that women feel engaged with breast screening and understand why it matters. This campaign is about sharing experiences and understanding why some women might be reluctant to come forward, but we want to help them work through any reservations so we can encourage even more women to take up their invitation and ultimately save lives.'
Thanks to the hard work of NHS teams, the number of women attending breast screening has risen since 2020/21, with latest data for 2022/23 showing that 4.30 million women had been screened in the last three years (66.4% of those eligible).
Latest data on the proportion of the number of women who attend screening after being invited (uptake) shows around a third are still not attending, which increases to 46.3% of those invited for the first time.
Amanda Pritchard, NHS chief executive, said: ‘Lives are saved when cancers are caught early, and we hope this first-of-its-kind campaign for the NHS will help encourage thousands more women to have more regular breast screening.
‘If we can help more people access NHS screening, we have a real opportunity to detect thousands more breast cancers early and ultimately save more lives.'
As part of efforts to drive uptake of breast screening, the NHS is launching a new "ping and book" service, with women already starting to get alerts to their phones via the NHS App to remind them they are due or overdue an appointment, with new functionality being developed to enable millions to book screening directly through the NHS App next year.
