Working with secondary schools

Project “CARES” (Cancer Awareness and Risk Education in Schools)

CARES is a project funded by York Against Cancer and facilitated by the Huntington Research School.

In the 2024/25 school year, the PHSE curriculum has changed to include more need for discussion of cancer-related topics. We are going to create a series of interactive teaching resources for PHSE around cancer that would be piloted by HSC and then rolled out to schools across the region. The current plan for this is to create new lessons (for secondary schools) on the following topics:

• HPV Vaccination and Cancer – Vaccination against HPV is incredibly effective at preventing a range of different cancers (of which cervical cancer is the best known). Schools now offer the vaccination to all year 8 pupils but there is little/no education provided to the students in school to make informed decisions. HPV vaccination rates dropped 16.7% following the pandemic and have not recovered.
• UV, Sunbeds and Skin Cancer – skin cancers continue to be the most common and frequent sunbed use remains a problem amongst young people
• Smoking/Vaping and Lung Cancer – smoking remains the UK’s single greatest cause of preventable illness and avoidable death. Most adult smokers start before the age of 18 and progress in reducing smoking in under 18s has stalled since 2013. E-cigarettes and vaping are not risk-free and their long-term impact is not known.

We are additionally supporting teachers in these topics by providing teacher training on difficult conversations with children around cancer. We are working in collaboration with Dr Rebecca Donaldson (a child psychologist who works for York Against Cancer) to help improve teacher confidence in conversations about cancer.

The CARES project seeks to help all members of our community reduce their risk of cancer through education.