Involving all voices
Cancer doesn’t discriminate. It can affect anyone irrespective of their age, ethnicity, gender identity, religion or sexual orientation. We’re committed to giving a voice to everyone affected by cancer, including those who may feel unheard or unrepresented in our work.
We want to include a diverse range of lived experiences of cancer for our Involvement Network so we can be as inclusive and representative as possible.
Cancer Experience
At Cancer Research UK, we work with people with lived experience of cancer (someone who has/had cancer or a loved one). Sometimes, we will ask that you have specific knowledge or experiences when it is relevant and essential to certain topics. However, most of the time you will not need to have:
- Any prior knowledge of Cancer Research UK or the work we do.
- An understanding of research or scientific understanding of cancer.
- Any prior experience of patient and public involvement (PPI).
I have dyslexia and struggle with technology. However, because you make me feel at ease, I’m able to access virtual meetings without any issues. I suppose because I can be open and honest about my disabilities, I don’t have a problem contributing. I don’t feel embarrassed when I can’t find the appropriate words and my processing speed is a bit slower than other people.
Involvement Network & Cancer Insights Panel Member
Our mission for Equality Diversity and Inclusion
Our work on Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) is important to us. As well as looking for diverse range of people within our work, we also focus on how we can support the people we do work with. For instance, we do this by making sure we acknowledge and address any barriers that might be in the way of people who want to use their lived experience to influence our work.
Health inequalities
Diversity in our work is important because we know different people have different treatment outcomes when it comes to cancer. Factors like your ethnicity, where you live, or your first language all play a part in unfair and avoidable differences in health and cancer outcomes across the population.
Because of this, we need to make sure that people from the communities and backgrounds most at risk of poorer treatment outcomes are well represented in our work.
Diverse and under-represented groups
We know it’s vital to include people from a diverse range of backgrounds and those who may fall into multiple groups of under-representation. The following are just a few examples of groups of people who can feel under-represented.
- People with multiple disabilities.
- People from Black and ethnic minority backgrounds.
- People from lower socio-economic backgrounds.
- People with rarer cancers.
- People who are older.
- People who are both patients and carers.
- People who have been adopted so don’t have access to genetic history.
How we can support you to be involved
Work in this area has already begun. We’ve made our role profiles, application forms and opportunity pages shorter and easier to understand. We also now limit interviews where possible.
We offer telephone support to help complete application forms and ask people if they need any additional support needs, rather than relying on individuals to ask.
Reasonable and tailored adjustments are what individuals may need to participate in activities. Examples of these are adjusting font sizes, sending hard copy reading materials in the post, option to attend in person meetings online, and sending written materials in advance of meetings.
You can email involvement@cancer.org.uk to request a copy of our reasonable adjustments guide or find out more about telephone support.
Any questions?
If you have questions about our equality diversity and inclusion work or how we can help you to get involved, you can contact us by emailing us at involvement@cancer.org.uk or call us on 0203 469 8777. We're always happy to answer questions and receive feedback, so please don't hesitate to get in touch.