With the current Cancer Strategy set to end in 2020, Cancer52 wants to ensure that the next cancer strategy better addresses the needs of people with rare or less common cancers. We are therefore very excited to announce the start of a new project which sets out to identify our priorities for the new strategy and influences the key decision makers and influencers! By consulting our members, patients and those who provide, or work in, services; we will examine the issues that patients with rare or less common cancers face and consider what the health and social care system needs to do to improve outcomes. Cancer52 will be sharing its findings by the end of 2018. We want to hear from you! We need the help of our members to ensure our priorities are strongly evidenced and impactful. You’ll be hearing more from us over the coming months about how you can get involved, but in the meantime here is an outline of the key activities we have planned.
Members’ survey - look out for a members’ survey that will be emailed to you shortly. We’ll be using this to gather your organisation’s thoughts and ideas on what needs to change for people with rare or less common cancers and how improvements can be made.
Members’ workshop - we’ll be using the All Members’ Meeting on 11 July, as well as our June Policy And Public Affairs Advisory Group meeting, to feedback our findings to date and interrogate and brainstorm ideas.
Patient input - we are extremely keen to ensure patients have the opportunity to input in to, and help inform, this work. We hope to achieve this through a patient survey followed up by in depth interviews. Your help in distributing the survey to patients will be crucial and much appreciated.
Other stakeholders - we will be looking to interview key Cancer52 stakeholders to gather their views about the needs of those with rare or less common cancers and how they think these could be addressed. We will be targeting organisations such as NHS England, PHE, NICE and Cancer Alliances.
Further questions Cancer52 has engaged Laura Thomas and Jennifer Mitchell from Brighter Together Consulting to undertake this work so please feel free to get in touch with either Cancer52 or Brighter Together with any questions. Jennifer and Laura from Brighter Together Consulting can be reached at info@brightertogetherconsulting.co.uk. What can I tell others? Work on the project is starting now and we will be contacting key stakeholders for their input shortly. We are keen to raise awareness of this work to ensure we can influence the creation of the next Cancer Strategy. We are very happy for you to talk to others about the project and if they want to find out more they can contact us at Cancer52 or Brighter Together Consulting at info@brightertogetherconsulting.co.uk . As ever, if you have any queries do please come back to me. We will as outlined above aim to keep you all very much in the loop on this project. I’d reiterate that we are hugely excited about this project as a real opportunity to ensure rare and less common cancers are kept top of mind with policy and decision makers as thoughts turn to what happens beyond 2020. We can’t do it without you - so all input and assistance will be very much appreciated.
My thanks in advance
Jane Lyons
CEO
Cancer5218