Calderdale Cancer Aware Team

The Active Communities & Places team has been working in Park Ward to understand which assets they can influence to embed the promotion of physical activity as part of what they do. One opportunity came through teaming up with the Calderdale Cancer Awareness Project (CAP), where they looked at how to build on the great work already happening.

The Calderdale Cancer Awareness project is a powerful collaboration between Halifax Opportunities Trust and Macmillan Cancer Support, dedicated to fostering open, honest conversations about cancer within the vibrant and diverse community of Park Ward. By empowering residents with knowledge, encouraging early detection, and promoting culturally sensitive healthcare, the initiative aims to prevent cancer, improve access to quality care, and uplift the community.

After learning more about CAP’s goals, challenges, and priorities, the team put together a simple action plan to offer support and strengthen the partnership.

The action plan included:

• Supporting the team with resources, including active conversation booklets in multiple languages and activity guides. This makes conversations about being active easier as a prompt and gives staff more knowledge and confidence in what activities are available locally.

• Offering Moving Medicine active conversation training to increase confidence in staff to engage in often difficult conversations. Five staff are now looking to enrol on the course.

• Linking the team to local physical activity providers. This enables staff to have a greater understanding of available sessions and more confidence in the relevance of referring people to the sessions. One example is the link with Project Park, where the two have now established a relationship. The Calderdale Cancer Aware team will now be giving talks to Project Park members throughout the autumn.

Rachel Porter, Cancer Community Engagement Manager, describes how they are working across the system to support more people being active:

“One local lady from the Park Ward community connected with the Calderdale Cancer Awareness service through her social prescribing link worker. She wanted to improve her health and become more active, important steps in helping to prevent serious illnesses like cancer.

We’ve been supporting her in setting up a women’s cycling group in partnership with Active Calderdale, as there’s a real need for it locally. Our data shows that many women in the area, especially from South Asian and diverse backgrounds, don’t get enough exercise and often feel isolated. A cycling group could make a big difference—helping women stay active, build confidence, and connect with others.

She’s already completed Bikeability training, is gaining experience by volunteering with young people, and is working towards becoming a qualified cycling leader. Her goal is to start a cycling group for diverse women and play an active role in the community.”

Throughout July and August, there were 137 conversations about physical activity between staff and residents. Staff now have a greater awareness of the activities available in the community and better connections to them.

The Calderdale Cancer Aware team are in the heart of the community making a difference to people's health and wellbeing. As part of our Community Led Approach we have worked collaboratively with Rachel and her team. As a result, the team now have updated resources, better connections to local physical activity providers and upcoming training will give staff the knowledge and confidence for support even more people to be active.

Anthony Whittaker, Public Health Practitioner at Calderdale Council.