Screening uptake recovers unevenly across the four nations
Bowel and cervical programmes show progress, but participation gaps by deprivation have widened.
Screening participation has recovered to close to pre pandemic levels in aggregate, while the gap between the most and least deprived areas has grown.
Public health teams are targeting outreach at the practices with the lowest uptake, with early results suggesting text based reminders outperform letters.
The programmes that improved fastest were those that shifted appointment booking online without removing the telephone option.
Published 29 August 2026
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