Day-to-day management of screening programmes for public health practitioners and managers

Abstract

This chapter gives the reader an appreciation of main issues that public health practitioners regularly deal with in screening, and how to approach them. This needs management skills and an understanding of screening programmes. Typical problems include preventing screening from starting when there is no sound evidence base, dealing with provision of poor quality screening, implementing policy changes within existing screening programmes, dealing with legal challenges relating to screening, and coping with damage caused by commercially driven provision of screening tests where there is lack of evidence, lack of informed choice, and no provision beyond the initial test. Dealing with any of these matters can involve using the media, and the final section of the chapter gives advice about how to cope when the media spotlight turns on screening. Prostate cancer and ovarian cancer screening are both used as case studies in this chapter.