Scotland

Scottish Conservative Party Conference 2023

Pancreatic Cancer Action attended the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Party Conference, which was held at the SEC in Glasgow on the 28th and 29th April 2023.

Heather Archbold, (PCA Health Information Executive), Tess White MSP Party Spokesperson on Public Health, Sport and Women’s Health, Dr Sandesh Gulhane MSP Party Spokesperson on Health and Social Care, Megan MacDonald (PCA Public Affairs and Policy Executive).

The team spent the weekend engaging with MP’s MSP’s, Councillors and members of the public to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. We pushed for four key policy asks:

  1. Support our cost effective proposals to improve early diagnosis and save lives in Scotland.
  2. Urgently invest in diagnostic equipment and the NHS workforce.
  3. Empower our community pharmacists to detect cancer and make direct referrals to cancer pathways.
  4. Invest in dedicated pancreatic cancer symptom awareness campaigns.

Each of these policy asks were supported by detailed, evidence-based proposals to improve early diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. For example, a proposal under our first policy ask included expanding the existing Lung Health Checks offered by NHS Scotland to cover a pancreas scan for high-risk groups, which will help catch pancreatic cancer cases earlier. And it only adds 10-15 seconds to the overall procedure.

We truly believe that implementing these four policies and their detailed proposals will allow for an earlier diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, which in turn will save lives.

Heather Archbold, (PCA Health Information Executive), Miles Briggs MSP co-convenor of Cancer Cross-Party Group in Scotland, Megan MacDonald (PCA Public Affairs and Policy Executive).

We had a great reception from all the politicians and delegates in attendance, who were keen to raise awareness of the symptoms of pancreatic cancer, take our proposals forward and make the 2020’s the decade of change for survival rates!

We look forward to having some follow up engagement with politicians to ensure we work towards our policy asks.

It was great to catch up with other exhibitors and explore options of how we can work together as organisations to raise awareness of pancreatic cancer. We look forward to sharing some details soon!

As always, there has to be a special mention to all people who came up to our stand sharing their experience of pancreatic cancer. It is an important reminder of why we are doing this and the lives early diagnosis will save.

We thoroughly enjoyed ourselves and we look forward to working with everyone we engaged with who took the time to speak about the deadliest common cancer in Scotland. We hope we can come together to save lives and make the 2020’s the decade of change!

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