Question 1

What is the purpose of the BELONG project?

Accepted Answer

About 1 in 10 women have breast cancer or heart diseases during their lifetime. Community salons in America have been successful in spreading messages about breast cancer awareness and heart diseases prevention, but there is not as much research on this in the UK. We want to see if community salons can help people to get checked and diagnosed.

Question 2

How is the BELONG team doing this?

Accepted Answer

We have consulted with hairdressers, beauty therapists, clients, and community stakeholders to design this project and to figure out a plan that can work, including what kind of messages would be most culturally appealing and how online tools (Apps) could be made easier to use. 
We are working with hairdressing salons, beauty salons and GP Practices in London. We are training hairdressers and beauty therapists to start health conversation with their clients and encourage them to use available health services and resources. The hairdressers and beauty therapists will have help from nurses and health care assistants from local GP Practices. 
We will collect data on how many hair and beauty salons we can recruit, how many clients use the online App, how many people attend their doctor’s appointments, and how many people continue to use the online App in the long term. We will also ask clients, hairdressers, beauty therapists, nurses and other staff at the GP Practices about their experiences.

Question 3

What happens next?

Accepted Answer

We will publicise the results through community online forums, and jointly produced audio-visual and written materials for hair and beauty salons, communities and health professionals. If this project is successful, we will use the data to design a larger project to see if this approach is effective and whether it is a good value for money.

Don't see your question here? Ask us!