The Silent Pandemic? The Global Rise of Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer - via HIFA

Last year, a team at The Christie NHS Foundation Trust in Manchester, UK published a real-world analysis of 203 patients with early-onset colorectal cancer (eoCRC). The study showed a dramatic surge in cases over a short period, with over half of patients presenting with metastatic disease, predominantly left-sided tumours, and a median symptom duration of just 3 months before diagnosis. The authors warned that eoCRC could represent an "evolving pandemic." 

See - http://doi.org/10.1093/oncolo/oyae239

Since then, incidence continues to rise across all continents, with similar patterns emerging in multiple national and international datasets.

Why This Matters for the HIFA community

• eoCRC is rising rapidly among people in their 20s, 30s, and early 40s.
• Most cases are sporadic, suggesting major gaps in understanding modifiable and early-life risk factors.
• Awareness among young adults and clinicians remains limited, contributing to delayed presentation.
• Meanwhile, short-form social media (e.g. TikTok reels) and AI-driven content are now the dominant information sources for young people - creating both opportunities and risks for public health.

Introducing Our Upcoming Initiative

We, the Special Interest Group in Digital Health & AI at WHO/Europe Youth4Health network, are launching a global project to develop evidence-based communication guidance for raising eoCRC prevention and awareness among young adults. The project will:

• Convene clinical specialists, youth advocates, communication scientists, social-media creators, and digital-health experts.
• Identify which prevention and awareness messages should be prioritised for youth.
• Define how these messages can be adapted effectively for short-form platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels.
• Examine how generative AI can support safe, accurate, and engaging content creation.
• Co-design prototype posts to illustrate how the consensus messages can be translated into youth-appropriate communication
• Our aim is to bridge the gap between emerging science, behavioural insights, and contemporary digital communication channels.

Why We're Sharing This Here

As we shape this work, we're keen to learn from the HIFA community:

• What approaches have you seen succeed in raising awareness of cancer symptoms among younger populations?
• Are there youth-driven or co-designed campaigns that we should look to as models?
• What are the risks you foresee when using short-form social media or AI tools for public-health communication?
• What considerations are especially important in LMIC contexts?
• How can we strike the right balance between urgency and fear-avoidance when communicating about cancer to young adults?

eoCRC incidence is increasing rapidly and globally. Communication strategies - particularly those targeting young people - have not kept pace with this trend. We would greatly value your insight and experience as we develop this work.

HIFA profile: Kathleen Guan is a multidisciplinary researcher passionate about all things digital behavioral health and (global) community engagement. Her PhD research focuses on involving young people in the co-design of personalized AI and emerging technologies, including adaptive mobile apps, LLMs, neurotechnology, and social media reels. By developing novel participatory approaches with a focus on preventative and precision health, Kathleen aims to inform how digital tools can meaningfully enhance everyday life and help reduce mental health challenges alongside chronic disease risks. To achieve this, she prioritizes community-based implementation by working closely with stakeholders across healthcare, engineering, policy, industry, education, and the arts.

Kathleen previously studied human rights and developmental neuroscience (BSFS, Georgetown; MRes, UCL) and has experience in public health and digital innovation (with WHO, Johns Hopkins, Yale, Qatar Computing Research Institute, various early-stage digital health start-ups) as a research collaborator and advisor. She chairs the Special Interest Group in Digital Health & AI within WHO Europe's Youth4Health Network. Kathleen has resided in 7 countries and worked in diverse settings across Asia, North America, and Europe, fostering her deep commitment to global health equity. She is always open to collaboration for social impact and can be found at https://www.linkedin.com/in/kathleenwguan/.

My Body, My Decision: Accountability for Bodily Autonomy and Self-Care in a Rapidly Changing World

 Dec 6, 2022 08:00 AM in Eastern Time (US and Canada)

Bodily autonomy and decision-making are critical for the realization of everyone’s sexual and reproductive health and rights and are the cornerstone of self-care. Join the SCTG Country Advocacy Working Group (CAWG) for an in-depth discussion on mechanisms and strategies to promote accountability for bodily autonomy, agency, and self-care. What have been opportunities and challenges for the Generation Equality Forum to mobilize action in these areas and how can we strengthen accountability for local impact? What are examples of successful advocacy and accountability efforts to enhance bodily autonomy and self-care at the country level?

Find the answers to these questions and more at this virtual, SCTG CAWG event organized by White Ribbon Alliance, CEHURD, Fòs Feminista, and Global Fund for Women.

Live simultaneous interpretation in French and Spanish will be available

Topics & Speakers

• Co-designing a feminist accountability initiative to hold governments to account for Generation Equality Commitments
  Emilia Blancarte Jaber, Global Fund for Women
• Advocacy milestones for institutionalization of self-care and Generation Equality Commitments. A case study from Uganda

Annah Kukundakwe, CEHURD, Uganda

• Implementing innovative models of self-managed abortion and responding to the needs of the most marginalized: Lessons from Latin America

Nina Zamberlin, Fòs Feminista, Argentina

Register to Attend

About the Self-Care CAWG

The Self-Care CAWG is a dynamic forum for sharing effective approaches, promising practices, and lessons learned on policy and advocacy efforts to advance self-care at the country level. CAWG is housed under the Self-Care Trailblazer Group (SCTG) and is chaired by SCTG member White Ribbon Alliance. Each quarter, the CAWG meets to explore a theme of wide relevance to self-care advocates, including building off topics covered in the 2021 Self-Care Learning and Discovery Series. ...

My source: IBP Network Global

Design4Health 2023

Design4Health is the collection of events, publications and networks established by Lab4Living.

Design4Health includes an international peer reviewed journal and a series of international conferences, first convened in 2011, that bring together designers and creative practitioners with researchers, clinicians, policy makers and users to discuss and disseminate their research.

Our publications and events provide an opportunity to reflect on how the disciplines of design and health might continue to develop new ways of thinking and working, and how we might impact positively and sustainably on the social, economic and cultural factors within our communities and beyond.

 

Design4Health conferences

Established in 2011, there have been five international conferences held so far, including one in Melbourne, Australia. The next full conference will take place in Sheffield in Spring / Summer 2023.

Watch this space! Design4Health 2023

The next conference will take place in Sheffield in Spring / Summer 2023. We will announce the date, themes, and formats of the next conference here and via www.design4health.org.uk and @design4health. We invite you to join the D4H mailing list for updates and announcements about Design4Health.

Join the conversation: @design4health #D4H2023.

(I will look to update this post, or re-post as details follow. PJ)

'Design Thinking' in and out of four boxes...

In 2019 Charles Orton-Jones gave a brief (single page) account of design thinking in sales, with a description of its five components:

Empathise

Define the problem

Ideate

Prototype

Testing

Below, I've mapped each to Hodges' model (and in parallel):

INDIVIDUAL

|

INTERPERSONAL : SCIENCES

HUMANISTIC----------------------------------------------- MECHANISTIC

SOCIOLOGY : POLITICAL

|

  GROUP

Empathise Ideate Define the Problem Prototype	Define the Problem Prototype Testing
Empathise Ideate Define the Problem Prototype Testing	Empathise Ideate Define the Problem Prototype Testing

 

There is often conceptual overlap and relationships when considering the most mundane, taken-for-granted of phenomena and events. This overlap increases rapidly with more complicated situations. This applies in the case of 'design thinking'. Ideate I take as a mental activity, but it is the flow and interplay of ideas: communication that counts. Empathy is imbued individually, but it is delivered and is realised in the social domain - as empathise suggests. Hopefully, from empathy with group rapport, trust, dignity and respect coherence will follow.

Politically, funding, team constraints, leadership may all influence defining the problem, prototyping and testing. Ideation is 'political' too. We forget this at our peril. Are we sure the protected characteristics have been factored in? You might also test the prototype against the original idea(s): thereby bringing in values. While this application is commercial sales, you are in personalised and specialised 'sales' in healthcare. 

While the above looks like duplication, the parallel approach can help assure the design thinking process as a whole. There is an open question here, but I'm sure despite the duplication and 'travel' to-and-fro within the model the structure helps instill some discipline with efficiency - economy of effort? The model acts as a marshalling (classification) yard.

As an example, this was brought home today on twitter, with a question about dealing with people who have a fear of needles. This may be children, a percentage of the general population and people with a learning disability. We see then how this overlap can be important. By default then working with the above design thinking + h2cm approach to achieve (variously) individualised, integrated, collaborative care then you might also be doing co-design and co-creation. Now that is sales ...!

My source: Orton-Jones, C. Design thinking is making an impact, Raconteur, 20.6.19. p.18.

 

REPORT: Creative methods to envision nursing practices addressing AMR - c/o RIPEN

Between the summer of 2018 and October 2019 a group of nurses from various disciplines and roles took part in a series of research workshops in Glasgow and London, culminating in a policy workshop event at the RCN in London. It was a pleasure and a challenge to be able to contribute and learn about this very urgent and global issue.


Here from the RIPEN website is a description and link to the report:

March 2020: New report:  Creative methods to envision nursing practices addressing AMR

A report on the use of arts and humanities approaches to co-design healthcare service innovation
 
The RIPEN project has asked: “How can relevant arts and humanities approaches help nurses to re-envisage their infection control practice ecologies in response to antimicrobial resistance?”. Our new report shows how we addressed this question, focusing on the creative methods used and lessons learned. We hope this will be useful for nurses and other healthcare professionals, designers and artists, educators, researchers, policy activists, and anyone else with an interest in the arts and health.

Please feel free to download, share and feedback any comments.

A video is also available on the website.