Prevent Breast Cancer’s First Health Inequalities Roundtable

On 18th March, Prevent Breast Cancer hosted its first-ever Health Inequalities Roundtable, bringing together experts in breast cancer prevention and early diagnosis.

This professionally facilitated event provided a platform for collaboration, knowledge-sharing, and action-oriented discussions aimed at tackling disparities in breast cancer outcomes.

Despite advances in early detection and treatment, breast cancer outcomes in the UK remain unequal. Ethnicity, socioeconomic status, cultural barriers, and other intersectional health inequalities continue to influence access to screening, participation in research, and awareness of breast cancer risks.

Addressing these disparities is critical to ensuring that every woman—regardless of background—has an equal chance of early diagnosis and survival.

A Collaborative Approach: The World Café Method

The event was structured using the World Café Method, a dynamic, café-style approach designed to foster interactive discussions. Participants were divided into small groups, rotating between tables to discuss different themes while sharing key insights directly onto tablecloths and paper. This format encouraged diverse perspectives and collaborative thinking.

The day began with a powerful opening address from Leena Chagla, President of the Association of Breast Surgery, who underscored the urgent need to address health inequalities in breast cancer prevention and early diagnosis. The Roundtable explored three key themes:

• Religious and Cultural Considerations: How can breast cancer awareness and screening campaigns be made more inclusive?
• Risk Assessment and Prevention: What barriers prevent women from accessing screening and participating in research, and how can we remove them?
• Interventions and Implementation: How do we ensure that research findings translate into real-world impact?

Each table was guided by a host from Prevent Breast Cancer, ensuring continuity and the capture of key themes to feed back into the wider discussion. This approach encouraged a rich exchange of ideas and helped generate actionable solutions for addressing health inequalities in breast cancer care.

Key Insights from the Roundtable

One crucial message that emerged was the importance of building trust between healthcare providers, researchers, and communities. Meaningful engagement from the outset is essential to ensuring research, messaging, and interventions are culturally relevant, accessible, and effective. Trust must extend beyond the duration of a research project—it’s about fostering long-term relationships.

There was also a strong call for fair remuneration and investment in communities. Supporting community groups—not just individuals—ensures engagement is mutually beneficial. Researchers should prioritise sharing findings with those involved, fostering transparency and respect. Additionally, supporting local initiatives or making donations reinforces these relationships and promotes trust.

Another takeaway was the need for greater collaboration and resource-sharing among organisations tackling similar challenges. Duplication of efforts—often due to a lack of communication—slows progress and wastes valuable resources. Engaging with researchers from other fields, such as diabetes, bowel and cervical screening, and COVID-19 vaccinations, can provide valuable insights into addressing health inequalities in breast cancer.

To streamline efforts and maximise impact, participants highlighted the importance of creating a central repository or network for community groups and researchers to share knowledge, best practices, and ongoing projects.

Finally, the discussions reinforced the need for action over observation. Understanding barriers is essential, but there was a strong consensus that more intervention-based research and practical implementation are necessary. We must shift the focus from identifying barriers to delivering and assessing impactful interventions that can drive meaningful change in breast cancer prevention and early diagnosis.

What Happens Next?

The conversation cannot stop here. To ensure meaningful, sustainable improvements, we need robust evaluation of interventions to determine what truly works.

Prevent Breast Cancer is committed to putting these insights into action. Later this year, we will host a follow-up meeting with grassroots community groups to amplify the voices of the diverse communities they represent, as well as those with lived experience of breast cancer, to co-develop practical, community-led solutions.

Following that, we plan to host a national meeting to bring together key stakeholders from across the UK. This meeting will expand the conversation, track progress, and co-create strategies to address health inequalities on a larger scale.

But the work doesn’t stop with us. Researchers must continue to push for innovative, evidence-based solutions and collaborate with communities to directly address barriers to early diagnosis and prevention. By focusing on real-world impact, researchers can help bridge gaps in care and improve outcomes for all women.

By working together—researchers, healthcare providers, charities, and community leaders—we can make breast cancer prevention and early diagnosis more equitable for all.