Our strategic partnership with Tesco is breaking records

‘Tesco Dance Beats’ raises £2m for the ‘Little Helps for Healthier Living’ partnership

On 19 July, thousands of Tesco customers, colleagues and celebrities broke the Guinness World Record for the longest dance marathon relay at Wembley Stadium. ‘Tesco Dance Beats’ was the retailer’s most recent campaign to raise money towards our landmark strategic health partnership with the British Heart Foundation, Diabetes UK and Tesco.

Announced in January 2018, the ‘Little Helps for Healthier Living’ partnership aims to bring together the partners’ expertise to help lower the risk of cardiovascular diseases, Type 2 diabetes and of course, cancer. Our combined end goal is to help customers and colleagues make healthier lifestyle and shopping choices.

Not only were the dancers record breakers, but with colleagues around the country taking part, they also raised an incredible £1m through donations, which Tesco matched, bringing the total to £2m raised for this unique partnership. 

As well as fundraising activity, we’re working with Tesco to establish the UK’s leading workplace health programme – educating colleagues to enable them to live their healthiest lives at home and at work. Tesco has already delivered a series of steps seeking to drive the adoption of healthier choices in their customers and colleagues. Alongside free health checks and an emphasis on supporting the mental well-being of colleagues, Tesco conducted the largest workplace health survey of its kind in the UK, receiving views from over 8000 staff. Similarly, since the launch of the Free Fruit for Kids scheme in 2016, Tesco has given away more than 100 million pieces of fruit to children in store.

We’re playing our part too— since the partnership started, our nurses have delivered Cancer Awareness Activity at 105 Tesco sites including, large stores, distribution centres and call centres across the UK. This means our nurses have engaged with 4,089 colleagues and 2,476 customers. By enabling our organisations to raise awareness of the risk factors of these diseases with colleagues and customers, we are tackling some of the biggest health inequalities and challenges.

Caro Evans, our Director of Partnerships, said: ‘Our partnership with Tesco allows us to reach a huge number of people and collaborate with a much-loved retail brand and other leading charities to raise awareness of cancer and other critical diseases. At Cancer Research UK, we’re passionate about creating transformative partnerships like this one with partners who share our objective to create a measurable improvement to the health of the nation and reduce the risk of developing disease. We’re so excited to see how this innovative partnership develops.’

At Cancer Research UK, we’re passionate about creating transformative partnerships like this one with partners who share our objective to create a measurable improvement to the health of the nation and reduce the risk of developing disease.

If you’d like to know more about partnering with CRUK, click here.