WHAT IS THE PREHAB4CANCER AND RECOVERY PROGRAMME?
Prehab4Cancer is a free exercise, nutrition and wellbeing scheme. It has been designed by a team of NHS professionals and exercise experts, based on latest research.
Original timeline as produced at the beginning of the programme. Please note the programme received sustained funding in 2021 and is no longer a transformation project.
Prehab4Cancer is provided in leisure facilities across Greater Manchester, which means that often patients can access the service close to their home.
The aim is to help patients (and their loved ones) to cope with cancer treatment and feel better, physically and mentally. Prehab4Cancer is designed to help people take an active role in their cancer care and live as well as possible with and beyond cancer.
Greater Manchester Cancer is the cancer programme of Greater Manchester’s devolved health and social care system. Greater Manchester Cancer has a broad focus, from prevention and early diagnosis to living with and beyond cancer and end of life care. the programme includes, amongst other things, the work of the Pathway Boards that were set up through Manchester Cancer and the work taking place in Greater Manchester as part of the national cancer vanguard.
GM Active is a collective of 12 leisure and community organisations from across Greater Manchester that are all part of the same movement – to get more people physically active. The group accounts for 87 leisure and sports facilities across the region, with a combined reach of 30 million visits a year, playing a major role in the health of our communities.
Prehab4Cancer is co-designed with our patient engagement representatives. This is a mixture of people who have been treated for cancer themselves or those who have been a family member, carer or friend of someone with cancer, from the Greater Manchester area.
We aim to have at least one user involvement representative attending all meetings and events related to the design and delivery of this service.
We facilitated our first prehab4cancer patient engagement focus group in November 2018 where we were able to capture all the vital comments and contributions made visually in a mural created during this event. The outputs of this focus group has directly influenced the further design of our programme and helped us to understand patient and family members’ perspectives, key to the successful delivery of this project. Since the project launch we have started running regular feedback sessions with participants. Their feedback will be fed into the development of the Prehab4Cancer programme in future.
Our Team
John was one of the co-chairs for the ‘Physical Activity’ group which informed the joint Macmillan and Royal College of Anaesthetist development of UK wide principles and guidance for prehabilitation in oncology (2019).
Karen has been instrumental in developing and implementing various innovation projects in Stockport, including tele-dermatology, symptomatic FIT pilot, Health and Well-being events for cancer survivors and a multi-disciplinary breathlessness clinic. In addition to this, she has delivered multiple education events to primary care professionals.
