A survey of industries and colorectal cancer screening of employees in the East Midlands of England

Abstract

The number of industries in the East Midlands of England who were prepared to enrol their employees in a scheme to detect colorectal cancer by faecal occult blood testing was investigated. Company directors were asked if they would supply a list of their employees over the age of 40 years and allow a research team to give a 15 min talk at the workplace. Forty-nine per cent of firms responded to the questionnaire and 27% of businesses were prepared to enrol. There was no difference in mean total employees between firms willing and unwilling to participate (unpaired t-test, P > 0.05). The commonest reason given by managers rejecting the scheme was that they did not believe the workforce would be interested.