Two years on – progress we’ve made since our EDI strategy launch
Cancer research exists to beat cancer; and beat cancer for everyone.
We launched Cancer Research UK’s first cross-organisational EDI strategy in January 2021 with the vision of everybody benefiting from our work and creating a charity where everyone feels like they belong, benefits from, and participates in, the work we do. The strategy set out our commitment to be an anti-racist organisation and challenge racism and discrimination in the scope of our work.
Our work on EDI over the past two years has focussed on five strategic priorities: research, cancer inequalities, engagement, our people and governance. We’ve made some great progress across each of these areas and have picked out some of our key achievements in this article, but we know there’s still much more that we need to do. This is not a quick process, and I remain personally committed to helping drive change and will continue to work hard to ensure we beat cancer for everyone.
1. Reducing cancer inequalities through our work and in partnership with others
Smoking remains the biggest cause of cancer and death in the UK, causing around 54,000 cancer cases a year. It’s also the single biggest driver of cancer inequalities, with certain groups in the population more likely to smoke than others, including people in deprived areas, people with mental health conditions, and the LGBTQ+ community. To address this, we launched our Smokefree UK campaign in July 2022, where we aim to work with MPs to take us a step closer to a future where smoking in the UK is history. New research that we released in September showed that ending smoking in England would have the biggest impact on closing the cancer inequality gap between the least deprived group and the rest of the country. The findings were striking, suggesting that there could have been 61% fewer cases of cancer linked to deprivation in England if nobody smoked.
In November, we published a landmark report offering the first comprehensive picture of deprivation and cancer in Scotland, setting out in detail the stark inequalities in health and cancer across the country. Launched at the Scottish Cancer Conference, the worrying report showed that cancer-related deaths are a startling 74% higher in the most deprived populations than least deprived.
We’ve also written a series of blog posts outlining how health inequalities relate to cancer – from smoking and obesity through to screening. The reality is that the picture is deeply worrying across the UK and there remains an urgent need to address inequalities across the whole cancer pathway.
2. Developing a more diverse and inclusive research community through the research we fund
At Cancer Research UK we invest multi-millions of pounds in world-class research each year. In 2022, we published our second, more extensive, grant funding report which revealed areas that we could improve the diversity of the researchers we fund.
We launched the Black Leaders in Cancer PhD Scholarship Programme to address the fact that Black researchers are underrepresented in academia. The scheme aims to help develop the next generation of Black leaders in cancer research, and four fully funded PhD scholarships will be awarded to students this year.
In October, we hosted the inaugural Black in Cancer Conference in London in partnership with Black in Cancer, welcoming leading Black cancer doctors, researchers, funders and patient advocates from across the world. The pioneering event was a great success and there have already been discussions about the conference returning in 2023.
We expanded our Women of Influence mentorship scheme to champion women in cancer research, pairing exceptional scientists with leading businesswomen. This initiative aims to provide early career researchers with support from outside of academia at a critical time in their development.
Over the past year, more than 80 researchers from underrepresented groups including women and those from ethnic minority backgrounds have observed our funding committees. Our new positive action scheme aims to demystify our peer review process and help researchers prepare their own grant applications. Our observers shared why it was a useful experience and why they would recommend it to others.
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3. Building an inclusive and diverse culture for all our people – staff and volunteers – so they can succeed and feel like they belong
We’re pleased that our 2022 staff survey showed that we’ve made improvements in this priority area, with 74% of staff saying that they feel we’ve created an environment where people of all identities and backgrounds can succeed, up from 63% in 2021. Our overall inclusion measure, established following the launch of our EDI strategy, also increased from 69% to 75%, and we are committed to further improving these figures.
Internally, we now have nine employee networks that play an important role in supporting our goal to be a more inclusive workforce. They provide support for staff and share their experiences, as well as hosting a range of events throughout the year. We worked with our networks to discuss the results of the staff survey, which included demographic questions for the first time, to help us gain a better understanding of the make-up of our staff and the experience of different demographic groups.
We’ve developed new guidance for our volunteer managers to help them create inclusive environments for their volunteers and we understand the importance of our volunteering activities appealing to as many people as possible, regardless of their background. Having a more diverse volunteering community will further increase the impact our incredible volunteers will have over the coming years.
We’ve also made several changes to the way we recruit: introducing anonymous CVs, reviewing our new and existing job descriptions through an inclusion lens, rewriting job advertisements with a focus on accessibility and inclusivity, and refreshing our online inclusive recruitment learning package for managers.
4. Achieving diversity across our governance, advisory and leadership structures making sure decisions are made in an inclusive way
We maintained our target of at least 50% of women working at Executive Board or Director levels at Cancer Research UK in quarters three and four of 21/22 and quarter one of 22/23, however this figure has dropped slightly to 48% in quarter two of 22/23. There are other areas where we need to improve diversity. One example of this is the percentage of staff in leadership roles (Executive Board, Directors and Heads) from ethnic minority backgrounds. Currently, 4.7% of staff at this level are from ethnic minority backgrounds (3.9% at the previous update), still well below our target of 12% by the end of 2023.
One way that we’re aiming to address this is through our internal talent development programme – Ignite, which launched for the first time in April last year. The programme is for high potential staff from ethnic minority backgrounds that have the ambition to move into leadership roles at Cancer Research UK and was created based on insights gained through a series of focus groups that we ran in 2021. The first cohort of 15 staff completed the programme last month and we’ve had some great initial feedback from participants.
5. Engaging with people in ways that are inclusive, relevant and accessible
Our information is relied upon by, and reaches millions every year, so we have a responsibility to make sure it’s accessible and understood by all people. We've partnered with external experts and drawn on perspectives across our charity to create new Inclusive Content Guidelines, a key resource that will be continually updated to reflect evolving conversations in our communities and the wider world.
We're in the process of assessing our information, services and fundraising to determine where there are accessibility or inclusivity gaps, as well as identifying the audiences that we aren’t reaching. We commissioned an external consultancy to undertake a comprehensive assessment of our fundraising ecosystem and portfolio, developed recommendations based on the findings, and are now in the process of finalising the proposal before rolling it out in the coming months.
We've utilised our owned media channels, largely social media and our digital blog, to engage our audiences around key cultural occasions, and we’re proactively seeking out new voices to feature in our communications that represent the full breadth of cancer experiences.
During 2023 we will continue the work that we’ve been doing over the past two years, as well as focussing on these key areas:
I’m proud of what we’ve achieved in the two years since we launched our strategy. I’m grateful for the collaborative cross-organisational work that has been done to implement our initiatives and it’s become clear to me that EDI is a topic that our staff and volunteers care deeply about. Beating cancer means beating it for everyone and we’ll continue doing everything we can to become a more diverse and inclusive organisation.
Retirement resumed - open to temptation … see details within my profile.
1yThere are too many unexpanded TLAs in the World. When I read this tweet, my first thought was “why all this fanfare about an Electronic Document Interchange Strategy?” Interestingly, that’s Google’s first suggestion for EDI too! As a volunteer with CRUK, my feedback has consistently been that their workforce looks incredibly young, able, white, female and middle class from my perspective. So, seriously, this Equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) initiative is most welcome.