Could you be a campaign ambassador?

For more than 120 years, research has revolutionised what we know about cancer and how it can be beaten. We have made discoveries that have saved countless lives and benefitted millions around the world each year.

Outside of the clinical improvements, we’ve taken these discoveries from the lab bench, right to the place where change happens – the benches in the Houses of Parliament.

My earliest memory of politics is my grandad saying he was going to write to Peter Pike. I was very young and thought my grandad was just good friends with this Peter fellow, to a seven-year-old it sounded like they were pen pals. It turns out that Peter Pike was our local MP, and my grandad was keenly aware of the notion that MPs work for you.

In 2011, at 47 years of age, my dad was diagnosed with a brain tumour – one of the hardest types of cancer to treat. Survival has barely improved over the last 40 years. My dad survived 13 months after his diagnosis of a grade 4 glioblastoma. My memories of caring for him over that time will stay with me forever; the long stays in hospitals; the devastating symptoms and consequences of his treatment; feeling hopeless as I lost a little more of the dad I’d always known every day. But every day we’re making progress, be that through new options like the 5G trial or political conversations like a debate in May 2025 on brain tumours in the Houses of Parliament.

Now, my job involves enabling and empowering CRUK campaigners to transform their expertise and experience into political change.

Let’s take smoking as an example. In September 1950, the British Medical Journal published Professor Sir Richard Doll’s preliminary report on smoking and carcinoma of the lung, bringing to light the dangers of smoking on health. He went on to conduct a 50-year research project providing detailed evidence on the impact of smoking on lung cancer risk. Just two years after Doll’s death, smoking was banned in all enclosed indoor spaces and workplaces in the UK, with more than 20,000 Cancer Research UK campaigners signing a petition urging MPs to back the ban.

Then, in 2016, campaigners convinced the UK Parliament to introduce plain, standardised cigarette packaging to help reduce the uptake of smoking and help smokers quit. And today, as I write this in 2025, the Tobacco and Vapes Bill is close to reaching Royal Assent; a historic moment paving the way for the creation of the first smokefree generation, as anyone born on or after 1 January 2009 will never legally be sold tobacco in their lifetime.

Of course, big tobacco is an easy campaign target, so what about treatment campaigns? In 2011, we launched our A Voice for Radiotherapy campaign, calling on the UK Government to provide more advanced and targeted radiotherapy treatments to more patients. Our petition was signed by 36,000 people and helped secure a total of £300m in Government funding for radiotherapy services, starting with £23m for a Radiotherapy Innovation Fund. Our report on the fund’s impact led to a further £30m investment in 20 cutting-edge linear accelerators able to deliver the most advanced forms of standard radiotherapy and Intensity Modulated Radiation Therapy. After that, the Government invested £250m in two high-power proton beam therapy units in London and Manchester. They’ve been treating complex cancers, often in children and young people, since 2018.

It’s clear then how impactful change can be brought about by making an informed case to Government. That’s why we need you.

I’ve been speaking to some of our inspirational and committed volunteer Campaigns Ambassadors, that work in research, about why they got involved and what they’d say to others in the research community about the political impact and change they’ve been a part of – and, of course, why they think you should join them. So over to Ryan…

Legislation transformed the research of the HPV vaccine into a national vaccination programme, reducing cervical cancer rates. It was legislation that transformed the research on smoking into a ban on indoor spaces and on plain packaging. It also helped to provide the infrastructure, connections and funding needed for cancer research.

On the other hand, as we have seen in the US, those in power can strip funding for cancer research away. And, at home, Brexit has impacted our research through visas, funding and a separation from Europe’s scientific community.

For better or worse, politics affects all of us.

It can be easy to believe that we are powerless amidst the chaos of the current world – the whims of those in power – but a single conversation, letter or email to the right person can make a huge difference. I have seen this change first hand, as before becoming a researcher at the Cancer Research UK Scotland Institute, my involvement with CRUK began as a Campaigns Ambassador.

What is it like?

Being a Campaigns Ambassador for CRUK involves contacting your local MP and/or devolved local parliamentarian about a range of campaigns led by CRUK to change government policy for the better.

It was an amazing way to get involved with volunteering with CRUK, because of how less time-intensive campaigning is relative to other forms of volunteering, such as giving your time in a shop. This meant that whilst managing a manic university degree and later an even more manic PhD, I was able to try and help push through policy changes to build a future where no one has to fear the word ‘cancer’ and where we can hopefully live in a world free from the disease. A world where unlike me and countless others, no one has to lose a relative to cancer.

During my time as a Campaigns Ambassador, I have helped to campaign on plain, standardised packaging, tackling obesity, and improving funding for the NHS. Recently, I have helped with the campaign on smoking – a 3-year campaign that has culminated with this year’s Tobacco and Vapes Bill, raising the age of sale for smoking and hopefully ending smoking within a generation.

Crucially, CRUK has begun influencing to support research in the wake of challenges to funding. Occasionally, a call to action to your MP will get a response of silence, and that silence can be a challenge. However, CRUK’s targeted campaigns with specific goals, driven by passionate people with personal stories has been a force for many wonderful successes.

Seeing the human face of cancer

Continuing as a Campaigns Ambassador throughout my time as a researcher has been invaluable.

I have been able to help with campaigning – and not just because politicians love a photo with someone in a lab coat. It has allowed me to provide a further insight to people about what we do, the challenges of research, the victories, where we need help. Research is at the heart of campaigning: it informs statistics; ensures that we are focusing on the right issues; and drives us forwards.

Being both campaigner and researcher has also helped to maintain the human face, the real-world impact of cancer. Whilst we work with samples, with petri-dishes, with microscopes and magnifications, our work can and should have a very real impact on the lives of those affected by cancer. We aren’t just trying to understand cancer; we are trying to help people.

Being a Campaigns Ambassador whilst being a researcher has made me more conscientious of this fact – that research is not a bubble and that every patient sample has not just one story but the stories of a family, of a community. Every potential treatment is hope and every expenditure is a will, a team run, a collection at a funeral, someone’s possessions in a shop. It has made me more aware that what we do is not the sum of our own work, but the sum of thousands. By standing on the shoulders of giants, we are not merely building on the work of our predecessors but are lifted up by contemporaries who may never step foot into a laboratory.

The people of the Campaigns Ambassador programme, like so many are driven by the most powerful of words – cancer – a word that can cause fear, cause tremendous uncertainty, but a word whose power can be turned to good. Our work is faith; only possible due to the hope people have that we will be able to beat cancer, and our greatest champions – those Campaigns Ambassadors – have turned suffering into the most powerful positive voice for change.

Research and researchers, as shown through its name, is and should be the central focus of Cancer Research UK, but at its heart are many, many people. Some people run, some people shop, some people support a loved one day to day, and some people write a letter to their MP.

For better or worse, politics affects all of us.  It is therefore critical our political representatives understand the important role they play in supporting researchers and research – we need their support too, in beating cancer.