Penny Brohn publishes evaluation of cancer services
Cancer charity Penny Brohn UK has published the findings of a year long evaluation of their 'wellness package' of services to support people living with cancer.
- 6th June 2016
Cancer charity Penny Brohn UK has published the findings of a year long evaluation of their Wellness Package of services to support people living with cancer.
This report comes at a time of building momentum for the health and social
care system to link better with the voluntary sector, as outlined in NHS
England’s 5 Year Forward View. Penny Brohn UK are one of the five partner
sites selected for the Realising the
Value Programme.
The Wellness Package
delivered 60 Living Well courses across the UK (reaching 519 people), and
provided 12 months’ of follow-up support. The report looks at the six week and 12
month retrospective experiences of people using their Wellness Package services.
Penny Brohn UK’s new
evaluation report findings in a nutshell
- Concerns and wellbeing improve after
the course: The patient-centred
outcome measure known as MYCaW (measure yourself concerns and wellbeing) data
showed that peoples’ concerns and health related quality of life significantly
improve after six weeks and this is sustained 12 months after attending Penny
Brohn UK’s services. The most common concerns expressed were around
needing help with psychological and emotional issues. - People are more able to self-manage
their health: PAM (patient activation
measure) data was collected, showing that people had a significant shift in
their activation scores six weeks after the Living Well course. This
indicates that people are potentially more able to self-manage their health
after the course. Also, when asked directly six weeks after attending the Living
Well course, 86 per cent of people reported they were more able to self-manage their
condition. People reported that self-management involved juggling key themes of
diet, exercise and stress-management techniques. - People change the way they use
healthcare services: 12 months after
the course, healthcare service use data showed a trend to use healthcare
services less after accessing Wellness Package Services (note: this data is
only a trend due to small data set size). Also, 45 per cent of people responding to our
evaluation said that their experience of the services had made a positive
difference to the way they accessed medical services by giving them confidence
to ask questions and make decisions about their care with doctors.
If you have any queries please contact [email protected], Research and Evaluation Lead at Penny Brohn UK.
