Question reference: S6W-01479
- Asked by: Carol Mochan, MSP for South Scotland, Scottish Labour
- Date lodged: 14 July 2021
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Current status: Answered by Maree Todd on 30 July 2021
Question
To ask the Scottish Government what steps it is taking to encourage more women to take up the offer of a breast screening service.
Answer
The breast screening programme is governed by the Breast Screening Programme Board as well as the National Screening Oversight and the Scottish Screening Committee. They monitor and evaluate performance, including uptake rates, against a set of standards developed by Healthcare Improvement Scotland.
Since the breast screening programme restarted last summer, additional steps have been taken to ensure uptake of appointments despite the impact from the Covid-19 pandemic. These include:
- breast screening centres contacting participants ahead of their appointments to confirm their intention to attend;
- providing information to reassure people that infection control measures are in place and, during lockdown, that attending a screening appointment was considered essential travel; and
- clearly communicating the importance of screening, along with tailored messaging to recognise additional concerns and challenges caused by the pandemic, for example for people who were shielding.
The Scottish Government recognises that the Covid-19 pandemic may have exacerbated inequalities in screening uptake across all national screening programmes, and we have committed £2 million over the next two years, to build a programme of evidence-based, sustainable and scalable projects that tackle inequalities in a systemic way.