Cancer Institute NSW - Breast screening campaign

Objective
To improve screening rates across NSW for women who speak Arabic or Chinese at home by encouraging them to talk about breast screening and motivate them to book a screening appointment.

Approach

Cultural Perspectives conducted two inspiring art workshops for Breast Screen NSW with Arabic and Chinese-speaking women aged 50-74 years. Women shared their personal stories and created individual canvases that were brought together and assembled as one final artwork to reveal the BreastScreen ‘B’ Logo at the centre of the piece. The artworks were unveiled by Cancer Institute NSW CEO and Chief Cancer Officer Professor David Currow at the State Library of NSW alongside community ambassadors, stakeholders, participants from the workshops and ethnic media. Post launch the artworks toured 7 NSW libraries in targeted areas of NSW.

For cervical screening, Cultural Perspectives created an engaging social media campaign which encouraged Chinese and Arabic-speaking women aged 18-59 to raise awareness about the importance of screening through the #notjustnailpolish hash tag on digital and social media. We mobilised our networks to drive this social media campaign, painting their nails purple for the initiative, with the support of media partnerships and popular bloggers as well as health care professional Ambassadors.

Results

The campaign was successful overall in its aims to position breast and cervical screening programs positively within Chinese and Arabic-speaking communities. For the effective strategic planning and successful implementation, the Breast Screening Campaign received a 2015 NSW Health Awards, Arts and Health category.

Over the campaign period there was a significant increase in breast screening participation for Mandarin-speaking women, while Arabic and Cantonese participation levels kept up with population growth.