How do we know this is the right strategy for people affected by blood cancer?

We are proud of the work we’ve done together, and we are committed to keeping people at the centre of our work.

We knew we had an opportunity to develop a strategy that would provide the best hope for people affected by blood cancer when we started the process, and to be successful we would need to speak to them every step of the way. We needed to really listen to and understand the challenges and experiences that people affected by blood cancer face, beyond our existing knowledge.

We gathered experiences, sought new insights, brought expert voices together and tested our thinking. We wanted to empower and amplify the voices of people affected by blood cancer, and provide mechanisms for feedback throughout the development of the strategy. For example, our community sent a clear message that we should focus on moving towards a cure and making better treatments available, and so the strategy is focussed on saving as many lives as possible.

We wanted to be bold, collaborative, and open in our approach to involving people. We brought their voices into key strategic decision-making, whether on our mission, fundraising, or how we work. We formed groups of people to look at relevant data and make recommendations. Most of these groups comprised of both Blood Cancer UK employees and people affected by blood cancer, working together to make decisions about our future.

There are two major things that came to the fore as a result of this process, which we are incredibly proud of. Firstly, we saw how incredibly knowledgeable, powerful and invested our blood cancer community is. Secondly, we saw how strong our commitment is to work in a way that values these voices and works with them to bring us closer to our vision and mission.

We know that achieving the ambitions in this strategy will be hard. But one thing we’ve proved time and again since we were founded in 1960 is that a collection of ordinary people can achieve extraordinary things. And we know our community’s determination to beat blood cancer is as strong now as it was then.

If we can spend the next five years harnessing this determination and giving every person affected by blood cancer the chance to play their part, we can make huge progress towards the day when blood cancer is finally beaten.

This is why this strategy represents a huge opportunity. It is an opportunity people affected by blood cancer cannot afford for us to miss.

You can find out more about how we'll beat blood cancer in our blog series, The Road to Beating Blood Cancer.