When Cancer Research published a report on cancer incidences and deprivation at the beginning of the week, I started looking into the picture across Teesside more closely.
In this week’s edition, researchers and those with first-hand experience describe how inequality operates at every point, from the circumstances that increase cancer risk to the financial strain of living with a diagnosis.
But I was also glad of the opportunity to share another side to the region – a counter to the negative portrayals which have been too prominent lately — and a reminder, as one source put it, that those who have the least, often give the most.
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New research links tens of thousands of cancer cases every year to deprivation, with those living in Britain’s poorest communities more likely to develop the disease than those in its wealthiest.
In Teesside, which is home to some of the country’s most deprived neighbourhoods, experts say the inequalities don’t stop there.
In parts of the region, people are dying from cancer at substantially higher rates than the national average. Areas like Middlesbrough and Hartlepool show high rates of lung cancer, late diagnosis, and premature deaths, with major disparities between affluent and deprived wards.
A new report from Cancer Research UK suggests that around 33,800 cancer cases every year are linked to deprivation, amounting to nearly 1 in 10 across the UK. In England, the overall cancer incidence rate was 17 per cent higher among the most deprived fifth of the population than the least deprived fifth.
This is partly due to a higher prevalence of preventable risk factors such as smoking and obesity, according to the charity, with more than half (54 per cent) of the UK’s deprivation-associated cancer cases being lung cancer.
At the same time, survival rates are lower in more deprived areas, with people more likely to be diagnosed at a later stage and less likely to receive the most effective treatments.
Deprivation, lack of awareness and lifestyle factors
In Hartlepool, the under-75 mortality rate from cancer is at a 15-year low of 150.1 per 100,000 population, but it remains the highest rate in the North East and the third highest rate in England.
Middlesbrough recorded a similar 147.3 per 100,000 premature cancer deaths from 2023–25, compared to the average of 117.7 across England.
In fact, the under-75 mortality rate from cancer is worse than the national average for all localities across the Tees Valley, except Darlington which is an outlier, with a recorded 121.0 per 100,000.
Understanding why outcomes differ so drastically across the region itself, is one of the questions researchers at Teesside University are now trying to answer.
“A lot of it is related to deprivation, a lack of awareness and lifestyle challenges,” Professor Vikki Rand, Professor of Translational Medicine and strategic lead for the National Horizons Centre (NHC) at the university told The Teesside Lead.
“Rates of drinking and smoking are quite prevalent, but you also have clusters of high unemployment. You’ve also got quite a broad demographic across the Tees Valley, so there are language and cultural barriers.”
Rand is co-lead of the Teesside Oncology Research (TORCH) project, a partnership between Teesside University’s National Horizons Centre and the Tees Valley Research Alliance at University Hospitals Tees, alongside Vice Chancellor’s research fellow, Dr Sweta Sharma Saha.
As well as building a biobank and working with pharmaceutical companies on developing new therapeutics, TORCH aims to improve collaboration between researchers, professionals and the general public to raise awareness and address some of the “knowledge gaps”.
Its overarching vision is to bring all outcomes across the region more in line with Darlington, asking how health information, research, and awareness campaigns can better engage with the populations often deemed “hard to reach”.
“One of the challenges is reaching our communities,” Rand adds. “It’s not that they are ‘unreachable’, we’re just not using the right tools to reach people.”
Addressing late diagnosis
Part of this work will be establishing Patient and Public Involvement and Engagement (PPIE) groups, encouraging people to engage with ongoing research and help identify the clinical challenges researchers should address.
Earlier this year, Dr Sharma Saha, whose work currently focuses on ovarian cancers, led a series of community events in Middlesbrough to raise awareness of some of the symptoms that can be mistaken for less serious conditions.
“Common symptoms are bloating, feeling full very quickly, and needing to use the toilet more frequently,” she explains. “People were a bit surprised that these could actually be symptoms of ovarian cancer.”
In Middlesbrough, data from 2021 shows fewer than half of cancers with a known stage were diagnosed at stages one or two, compared with almost 54 per cent in Stockton-on-Tees.
Dr Sharma Saha says these kinds of events are crucial for raising awareness so that people consult their GP sooner, and hopefully get diagnosed earlier.
“Otherwise symptoms get missed, and by the time they become serious enough to go to a GP, the cancer has already progressed to a late stage where in a lot of the cases it doesn’t respond to treatment anymore,” she adds.
“You shouldn’t just be a statistic”
Behind each of these figures is a person, and a family, affected by cancer.
Micky Day’s daughter Demi was diagnosed with brain cancer in 2015. She started treatment the day after her 18th birthday.
“It was just heartbreaking,” Day tells The Teesside Lead. “She didn’t really get to celebrate.”