Inequalities in cancer

Health inequalities are unfair and avoidable differences in health across the population, and between different groups within society. They arise because of the conditions in which we are born, grow, live, work and age. These conditions influence how we think, feel and act and can impact both our physical and mental health and wellbeing. Within this wider context, healthcare inequalities are about the access people have to health services and their experience and outcomes.  A key component in the NHS Long Term Plan was to try to strengthen its contribution to reducing healthcare inequalities.  To this end, NDRS have committed to including key demographic breakdowns within all regular outputs where it is safe and appropriate to do so. 

A patients gender is ideally self-reported, but there are rare instances where this information is completed by medical or administration staff. As with all data that require some human input, errors in the data can occur. Where a patient's cancer diagnosis does not match their self-reported gender, we cannot currently know whether the patient is transgender or non-binary, or whether a data error has occured. These cases are usually very small in number and are therefore not safe to report upon based on disclosure control rules.

Coastal communities often suffer with worse health than those living more inland. Coastal populations were identified by NHS England's Core20PLUS5 approach as a key group for study to reduce health inequalities, but without an agreed definition of coastal, research in this area has been slow.

In 2024, NDRS published a study that derived and validated a novel, empirical definition of 'coastal' designed to be used in cancer data reporting. This definition assigned Lower Super Output Areas (LSOAs, small geographies in England composed of 1000-3000 persons) as 'coastal' if 25% or more of the postcodes contained within it were within 5km of England's coastline. This definition can now be share and used by colleagues across the NHS and third sector to enable deeper understanding of the extent of cancer-related coastal health inequality.

The published paper can be found on the BMJ Public Health website.

We aim to produce reports broken down by age groups, gender, ethnic groups (5 high-level groups used in the 2021 Census plus an ‘Unknown’ category) and deprivation quintiles (based on Index of Multiple Deprivation, where quintile 1 is the most deprived 20% of areas), wherever possible.

The table below provides links to a range of regular NDRS publications, with a summary of which patient demographic factors have been included in the linked work.  This is not an exhaustive list of NDRS outputs and is subject to change as we develop our reporting.

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Please contact the NDRS team with any queries via [email protected].

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