Cancer Research UK launches its new equality, diversity and inclusion strategy

The world’s leading cancer charity, Cancer Research UK, has today launched its first charity-wide Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) strategy, outlining the charity’s commitments and setting out the immediate actions that it will take to improve, accelerate progress and change. This new EDI strategy brings focus to Cancer Research UK’s efforts to promote equality, diversity and inclusion and is a key priority for the charity in its fight against cancer. 

The overall vision of the charity’s EDI strategy is to create a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from and participates in the work it does. The strategy will touch on all aspects of the charity’s work. 

Michelle Mitchell OBE, Cancer Research UK’s chief executive, said: “At Cancer Research UK, we all share a common mission of beating cancer, and beating cancer means beating it for everyone.  We’re the largest independent funder of cancer research in the world, providing health and patient information to millions of people each year and influencing governments.  And we’re a large organisation, employing thousands of people and supported by many thousands more volunteers. We believe we have a clear responsibility to address inequalities and to promote equality, diversity and inclusion in all of these areas.”  

The EDI plan lays out a comprehensive programme of commitments, and outlines how the charity will be held accountable for the delivery of them.  It aims to: 

• Reduce cancer inequalities through its work and in partnership with others 

• Develop a more diverse and inclusive research community through the research it funds 

• Build an inclusive and diverse culture for all its people so they can succeed and feel like they belong 

• Achieve diversity across its governance, advisory and leadership structures making sure decisions are made in an inclusive way   

• Engage with people in ways that are inclusive, relevant and accessible 

The charity’s EDI strategy is also underpinned by the following principles: 

• To become an anti-racist charity and challenge racism and discrimination in the scope of its work 

• Work collaboratively across the charity and with other likeminded organisations to achieve its vision and to leverage more impact 

• Become an accessible charity that treats people with dignity and respect in every interaction 

• Use its influence to promote equality and inclusion internally and in its work with others 

• Continue to improve, adopt best practices and learn from others 

• Collect data where the charity does not have it, to deepen its understanding of its audiences and better inform its work 

Michelle Mitchell continued: “I have a long been committed to EDI, and so I’m thrilled that we’re taking this step forward as a charity. We have made significant progress over recent years, but we have much further to go. We are publishing this strategy in the spirit of transparency, so we’ll publish our progress each year and we’ll be open about where we can improve.  

“I’m personally committed to leading this change for our charity. I am firm in my belief that taking the actions set out in this strategy will make Cancer Research UK a stronger and higher performing charity, and will enable us to make faster progress against our ambition of reaching 3 in 4 people surviving cancer by 10 years or more by 2034.”