This profile looks at cancer screen rates across North Yorkshire for bowel cancer, cervical cancer and breast cancer. 

Cancer screen coverage- bowel cancer

Cancer screening supports early detection of disease. Screening programmes target populations with the highest risk to help with is early detection. In North Yorkshire, as for England, there is there is greater uptake of screening for breast and cervical cancer compared with bowel cancer. Despite being lower than other screening programmes, uptake of bowel cancer screening in North Yorkshire is significantly higher than England (64% locally compared to 59% nationally). All districts in the county have statistically higher screening rates for bowel cancer compared to the England average.

Cancer screen coverage- cervical cancer

Coverage for cervical cancer is statistically higher in North Yorkshire (78%) compared with England (71%). All districts in the county have significantly higher screening coverage for cervical cancer compared with England. Breast cancer screening coverage was 78% in 2017/18 and was significantly higher than the England coverage rate of 71%. All districts have a significantly higher rate of coverage than England.

Cancer screen coverage- breast cancer

Screening rates for both breast and cervical cancers have been of decreasing in the county and programmes need to be implemented to reverse this decline. Screening for cancer leads to diagnosis at an earlier stage, leading to improved outcomes and increased survival. There is minimal variation across the districts in screening coverage overall, suggesting a county-wide approach to increase cancer screening uptake is needed.