Listening to the people affected by cancer: our UK-wide engagement event

We met people affected by cancer from across the UK

Our bread and butter is research, but it’s people who matter to us.

Our progress isn’t simply measured in new discoveries, but in the impact our research has on people affected by cancer.

That’s why on Friday last week we ran a series of simultaneous events across our UK Centres in order to better understand how we can meet the needs of cancer patients.

Our goal? To hear, first hand, the voices of patients and their loved ones and find out how people want to get involved with our work. Patients have always been at the heart of our work, and these events were the first step to bringing them even closer to what we do.

In Belfast, Glasgow, Dundee, Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds, Liverpool, Cardiff, London and Southampton, we invited people affected by cancer to come and share their views and ideas with us. We had the pleasure of meeting hundreds of people affected by cancer or involved in caring for cancer patients, from all walks of life, and united in their passion to help make things better.

As well as physically meeting face to face, each Centre was virtually linked up in order for people to share their ideas with those from other parts of the country. And we followed the event closely on our twitter feed using the hashtag #YourSayYourCRUK.

The day was a fantastic success and – most importantly – has given us much food for thought. We’ve put together a collection of tweets, photos and videos of the day below to give a flavour of the main themes of the day.

We’re now busy digesting the many ideas gathered on the day, and will use them to develop more opportunities to work in partnership, harnessing the expertise of people affected by cancer to really make a difference, so together we can save more lives sooner.

And we would love to hear from you too – below is just a small snapshot of the questions raised and discussions of the day – if you would like to comment or get involved, please either leave us a comment on this blog post or email [email protected].

• For those reading this via email, please view the below Storify by clicking on this link