Leicester cancer researchers and members of the city’s South Asian Population enjoyed an afternoon of dance, meditation and wellbeing to celebrate the end of a dynamic project in November 2024.
The group has been coming together in a series of creative sessions to talk about personal experiences of cancer, helping researchers funded by the NIHR Leicester BRC better understand cultural differences, and attitudes towards participation in research.
The project ‘A Multitargeted Approach to Clinical Trials Access’ was led by Dr Harriet Walter and Dr Sam Khan from the BRC’s Personalised Cancer Prevention and Treatment Theme.
They were supported by Gurpreet Grewal-Santini from the University of Leicester’s Centre for Ethnic Health Research and Dr Lynne Howells from its Institute for Precision Health and conducted over a two year period.
Dr Harriet Walter explains: “This study focused on awareness and understanding of cancer clinical trials within Leicester and Leicestershire’s South Asian community.
“This is important as we know that taking part in clinical trials helps us to learn more about cancer and improve cancer outcomes, and it is vitally important for clinical research participants to be representative of our population.
“Despite our diverse population here in Leicester, we know that our South Asian members are less likely to participate in a clinical trial.”
The researchers from the Leicester Cancer Research Centre working with the Centre for Ethnic Health Research invited community champions, those with a personal history of cancer including those that have participated in clinical trials from our South Asian population, and their carers and relatives, to participate in focus groups.
“At these sessions we worked together to develop an understanding of cultural differences in understanding and appreciation of cancer and clinical trials.” continued Harriet.
“Using this information and working together with our community, we then co-developed a series of short videos with participants sharing their lived experiences of cancer and participation in clinical trials, to improve understanding and raise awareness of clinical research.
“We also hoped to understand from these focus groups how we could ensure that access to clinical trials was more equitable for all of our population and improve the way that we work with our communities.
“On 9 November 2024, we held a cancer clinical research afternoon at the Belgrave Neighbourhood Centre to share what we had learnt from the study.
“This brought together key stakeholders including our local communities and organisations, charities, community champions, patients, carers and family members.
“During the afternoon we shared the co-developed outputs that provided insights into a patients journey through a new cancer diagnosis and taking part in clinical trials.
“Our local support groups were also able to talk about their services and provide information about the support services they run to help people going through treatment for or recovering from a cancer diagnosis.
“Everyone who came along was given the opportunity to try taster sessions of a number of activities to promote wellbeing from Pilates and Bollywood Dancing to meditation sessions and speak to experts working in the cancer field.
“Following on from the event we are working with a local artist to generate illustrative outputs from the project and event. We hope to be able to share these soon! We will also be working with our local cancer physicians to share these videos widely.
“We would like to give special thanks to Mrs Gurpreet Grewal-Santini for all of her help in bringing the community together to develop the project, and for helping to organise such a fun and educational afternoon.
“In particular we would like to thank our patients and their families for working with us throughout and sharing their deeply personal experiences, and to celebrate their passion for helping others navigate their way through a cancer diagnosis.
“Lastly, we would like to thank everyone whom attended and contributed to the event on the 9th November.”
For more information on the work of the BRC’s Cancer theme, please click here.
For more on the University of Leicester’s Centre for Ethnic Health Research, please click here.
For more on the work of the Leicester Cancer Research Centre, please click here.