The strategy builds on strong foundations. Together, we’ve grown involvement across Cancer Research UK. Now, we’re focusing where it matters most – making involvement more meaningful, inclusive and impactful.
Working in partnership with people affected by cancer helps us:
Make research more relevant, simple and accessible.
Improve our information, marketing campaigns and policy work.
Create work that meets people’s real needs.
Our principles shape how we work with people affected by cancer. They guide every involvement activity and ensure it’s purposeful and impactful.
We involve people early, not as an afterthought. We create opportunities that are relevant, flexible and shaped around people’s needs.
We work side by side. We value lived cancer experience as expertise, listen carefully, and act on what we hear.
We remove barriers. We use plain language and accessible ways to take part so more people can get involved.
We show the difference involvement makes. We share what changed, what we learned and how people’s input shaped our work.
These areas help us decide where we focus our efforts over the next five years.
We’re focusing on involvement that makes a real difference.
We achieve this by:
Developing our involvement ladder, a tool to help us measure the impact that involvement makes.
Updating our ways of working to make sure we have the capacity to support the projects that will make the most difference.
We’re improving how people experience involvement.
We achieve this by:
Developing better data and digital systems to engage more people and open up more opportunities.
We’re building diversity and inclusion into everything we do.
We achieve this by:
Co-creating resources that support inclusive involvement opportunities.
Building the overall diversity of our Involvement Network.
We’re strengthening how involvement supports our work on inequalities.
We achieve this by:
Building relationships with people and communities who are more likely to experience poorer cancer outcomes.
Working in partnership with people and communities in ways that suit them, helping to make sure their experiences shape our work.
To achieve the goals in our four focus areas, we developed a roadmap that sets out the steps we’ll take in the short, medium and long term. We’re also creating an action plan and tracking our progress throughout the next five years.
Develop and pilot our involvement ladder, an impact measurement tool.
Define and deliver a model for partnering with communities.
Use digital tools to help us engage with people affected by cancer in a more personalised way.
Create an involvement toolkit.
Create new learning opportunities for people affected by cancer and our staff.
Co-create more flexible ways for people to get involved.
You can help shape what we do. Whether you have a little time or a lot, your experience can make a real difference.
Join a group of people affected by cancer who want to make a difference to the lives of others facing cancer. Share your views to help us to beat cancer whilst ensuring that we’re meeting the needs of future patients and their families.
Browse a list of activities you can participate in and apply for to help shape work throughout the charity as well as for wider organisations.
