Interventions for improving communication with children and adolescents about their cancer.

Parents know the U&EC service options available, and their first choice is the GP. Multiple contacts are being made for relatively well children, often due to repeated referrals within the system. Safety netting advice reduces re-attendances but parents want explicit and consistent advice for appropriate home management.

The use of data to challenge and improve healthcare has a long and distinguished history but has often failed to bring about expected improvements. It has never become fully embedded in clinical practice, probably because data alone are insufficient to drive change. There is now a greater appreciation that changing and improving healthcare requires changing behaviours. Clinical audit remains one of the important tools that can be used to facilitate such change.

No abstract

The UK government has committed to improving the nation's health. It has set itself a 'grand challenge' of enabling people to live an extra 5 years of healthy life by 2035 while narrowing the gap between the richest and poorest. Bolder action is needed to make progress towards this goal. •The transition to a new public health system needs to be managed carefully, to ensure that the reorganisation does not disrupt the pandemic response or lead to a weaker system in future.