91̽»¨

About the study

Start date: 01 January 2024
End date: 30 June 2026

Background

DETECT-CRC is funded by Yorkshire Cancer Research as part of their ‘For More Life Without Cancer’ grant. 

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is the fourth most common cancer in the UK and the second leading cause of cancer deaths. Early detection is crucial, as it drastically increases the chances of successful treatment. However, people living in areas with higher poverty levels (socio-economically deprived areas) often have lower rates of CRC screening and thus receive later diagnoses, leading to poorer outcomes.

Community pharmacists are easily accessible to most people. Nearly 90% of people in England live within a 20 minute walk of a pharmacy. About 84% of the UK population visits a pharmacy at least once a year. People in highly deprived areas have even better access to pharmacies (99.8%) than those in more affluent areas (90.2%). This shows that pharmacies are in a unique position to promote cancer awareness and early detection, especially in disadvantaged communities.

Year 1

During the first year of this project (2024) we will be working with people from these communities, GPs, and pharmacists to co-design a service where people displaying CRC symptoms can be identified in pharmacies, and offered a faecal immunochemical test (FIT). This is a non-invasive test that uses a dipstick to detect early signs of blood in the stool. It is very sensitive at finding colorectal cancer and is widely used to test both people with symptoms and those without symptoms who are getting screened for bowel cancer.

Year 2

During the second year of this project (2025) we will test if the service works by running a randomised controlled trial (RCT). We will randomise 40 pharmacies in Deciles 1 and 2 of multiple deprivation, across South Yorkshire. We will then train half of them to do active case finding and enable them to hand out FIT kits (which currently only GPs can do). We think this will decrease the time to diagnosis, shift detection to earlier (curable) cancer stages, thereby saving lives.

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Aims and objectives

1. Develop a pharmacy-based active case-finding (ACF) service  
2. Assess the feasibility of ACF trial to identify people with potential CRC symptoms 
3. Identify efficiency signal 
4. Understand and mitigate potential sources of intervention failure 
5. Perform a preliminary cost-effectiveness analysis for ACF 

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Project leadership group

PLG

Name	Role	Organisation	Email
Dr Matthew Kurien	Co-Chief Investigator	University of 91̽»¨ - Clinical Medicine	matthew.kurien@nhs.net
Prof Daniel Hind	Co-Chief Investigator	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	d.hind@sheffield.ac.uk
Naseeb Ezaydi	Study Manager	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	n.ezaydi@sheffield.ac.uk
Dana Marbu	Research Assistant	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	d.marbu@sheffield.ac.uk
George Cleaver	Trial Support Officer	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	g.j.cleaver@sheffield.ac.uk
Katie Biggs	PPI Lead	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	c.e.biggs@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Ines Rombach	Statistician	University of 91̽»¨ - CTRU	i.rombach@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Chloe Thomas	Health Economics	University of 91̽»¨ - Health Economics and Decision Science	c.thomas@sheffield.ac.uk
Dr Ravi Sargur	Co-Applicant	91̽»¨ Teaching Hospital NHS Trust	ravishankar.sargur@nhs.net
Dr Alex Ball	Co-Applicant	91̽»¨ Teaching Hospital NHS Trust	alex.ball6@nhs.net
Prof Ian Kellar	Behavioural Scientist	University of 91̽»¨ - Psychology	i.kellar@sheffield.ac.uk
Claire Thomas	Community Pharmacy Clinical Lead	South Yorkshire Integrated Care Board	claire.thomas47@nhs.net
Dr Jon Dickson	Co-Applicant	University of 91̽»¨ - Population Health	j.m.dickson@sheffield.ac.uk
Prof Peter Bath	Co-Applicant	University of 91̽»¨ - Information School	p.a.bath@sheffield.ac.uk
Rachel Harris	Co-Applicant	PPI	rachelsianharris@gmail.com
Atique Arif	Co-Applicant	RDaSH	atique.arif@nhs.net
Rachel Matthews	Independent Co-Design Facilitator	National Voices	Rachel.Matthews@nationalvoices.org.uk

Study updates

The co-design workshops have been completed, and we are now in the process of setting up our intervention pharmacies to ensure everything is in place to start the trial in early January.