Hello there!
I’m Danni, newly appointed Head of Policy and Campaigns. I wanted to introduce myself and tell you about exciting new developments as well as our plans for the future.
We’ve recently recruited two super-talented individuals to our team - Emma Lavelle is our new Policy Manager who has been at Breast Cancer Care for 4 years and steps up into the role from her former post as Campaigns and Involvement Coordinator. Andy Glyde joins us from Age UK to take up his role as Public Affairs and Campaigns Manager.
With a new team in place, we’re really excited to be ramping up our policy and influencing work and working with as many of you as possible to do so. Between us, we have lots of ideas and plans about pieces of work that we can do - we know you do too and we’ll be in touch regularly asking you for your ideas and feedback.
More immediately, we’ll be looking again at two key areas. We’ll be moving forward with the My Body, Myself campaign, ensuring that our recommendations are translated into actual changes in practice. We’ll also be picking up the Spotlight on Secondary Breast Cancer campaign and furthering the great work that has been done on developing our standards of care.
This leads me nicely to my next point. As you may know, our focus on Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness Day this year will be on the hidden effect of pain, and pain management. In 2011, valuable research reported that the burden of symptoms was a significant problem for many women with a diagnosis of secondary breast cancer: 34% of women reported high levels of pain and other uncontrolled symptoms.
We know also that this is an issue that many of you talk about with us, both on and offline. With this in mind, we’re keen to raise awareness of the issues people face in terms of controlling pain and accessing services that can help them manage their pain more effectively.
Take 5 minutes of your time to complete this survey - the results will be used to raise awareness of the needs, issues and challenges people with secondary breast cancer face.
Thank you,
Danni