Putting people affected by blood cancer at the heart of our work

The most obvious way we have done this is through our Ambassadors, a group of 80 people affected by blood cancer. We recruited ten new Ambassadors during the year, increasing the diversity of the group. During the year, Ambassadors supported our work through a range of activities, including appearing in the media, speaking at events, and meeting and briefing MPs.

Five of them are also trained as digital champions, giving support to people on our online forum or sharing their experiences on social media.

We continued to develop our Policy Panel of people affected by blood cancer who set the direction for our policy work, and we introduced a new Editorial Board – a group of people affected by blood cancer who advise us on how our communications can better meet their needs.

We also involved people affected by blood cancer in changing our name. We had meetings with them right through the process, ensuring they had their chance to have their say at every stage. We also involved people with blood cancer on the steering group for the project, meaning they could feed into internal discussions in a way that was a new way of working for us. This meant we were able to consider perspectives that we might not have done had this group just included members of staff.

People affected by blood cancer were also at the heart of the development of our new website – by involving them at every stage, we made sure it better meets their needs.