Faster, fairer, better: Making an impact in 2023/24
Impact Report 2023/24
A message from our CEO
This year, we have seen tremendous movement towards our ambition and that is thanks to people like you.
To truly address the scale of the most common cancer in men, our aim has been to inspire and influence people to come together across the local, national and global prostate cancer community to discover ways to save men’s lives.
Together, we give men the power to navigate prostate cancer, ensuring faster, fairer and better diagnosis and treatment.
We’re thrilled that over a million men have completed our 30-second online risk checker and can do something about their prostate cancer risk. This was only possible because so many men have bravely told their stories and our celebrity friends, key media, sport and corporate partners have amplified our message. And having listened to Black communities, whose risk of prostate cancer is double, we are delighted to record the highest levels of Black men taking the risk checker we have ever seen.
We cannot thank our loyal and generous supporters enough – this year you’ve enabled us to significantly ramp up our investment in game-changing research, innovation and transformation.
We are now the biggest funder of prostate cancer research in the UK, spending £25m this year alone. This means we can continue to build and nurture a community of researchers and a network of global experts, who are achieving more for men together than they could alone.
We saw a perfect example of that in our work alongside the research consortium developing the world-leading £42m TRANSFORM screening trial launched this year. TRANSFORM is designed to save thousands of lives by providing the evidence we need for a screening programme to get more men diagnosed early when prostate cancer is most treatable. We’re incredibly proud to have the convening power to deliver something so crucial and are delighted the Government have placed their faith in us and committed to contributing £16m towards the trial.
We salute our superb nurse specialists and the many healthcare professionals who are keen to make improvements for men with prostate cancer. We have embraced their thirst for knowledge, offering innovative educational programmes and backed their ideas for improvements. And we continue to talk directly to decision makers who have the power to make change happen.
As the leading UK prostate cancer charity, we play a pivotal role in the prostate cancer eco-system and know it is only by working in collaboration that we can create a world where no man dies of prostate cancer. I would like to express our gratitude to everybody who has contributed to the great strides we have made this year towards that goal and I hope you enjoy the report.
A trial to deliver the evidence we need to bring in prostate cancer screening once and for all
As a result of the pandemic, 14,000 men in the UK are living with undiagnosed prostate cancer. From January to April 2022, we joined forces with NHS England and launched a national risk awareness campaign to find these men and promote our 30-second risk checker.
With no signs or symptoms in the early stages and no screening programme, it’s a huge challenge to find the men who have prostate cancer and get them diagnosed early, when it can still be cured. Thanks to supporters sharing our risk checker, the campaign saw record-breaking results, both in terms of our reach and the impact it had on men’s lives.
- 551,396 people used our 30-second risk checker, over 80% of whom are at higher risk of prostate cancer because of their age, ethnicity, or family history.
- Urgent referrals for urological cancers reached an all-time high, with almost 25,000 people checked in March alone. Referrals were up almost a quarter (23%) on the previous month and 28% above pre-pandemic levels.
- On the day of launch, our Specialist Nurses took 250 calls, twice as many calls as normal, and our website dealt with its biggest ever spike in people seeking information on prostate cancer.
Find out more about TRANSFORM
We’re incredibly proud to be the only UK organisation able to pull off a trial of this scale and ambition. Read about the latest updates.
Turning impactful research results into real world change. Fast.
From promising research to life-changing impact
Through our unique Transformational Impact Awards, we provide significant funding that helps scientists turn promising discoveries into life-changing improvements for men.
Professor Charlotte Bevan and her team at Imperial College London are among those benefiting from our funding. We’ve invested £1.6m to support their research, which will help us better understand how treating the prostate can affect cancer that’s spread to other parts of the body – when it becomes harder to treat.
By studying blood samples and cancer cells from men before and after treatment, Prof Bevan hopes to find new and better ways to treat prostate cancer that has spread.
This is a big project requiring a team of experts based in the UK, Europe, and the US, and we are thrilled that the scale of Prostate Cancer UK’s vision is going to make it happen.
Being there to support men, whatever they choose to do
With labs working at reduced capacity and clinical trials on hold, the effects of COVID-19 were still threatening existing and future research projects in 2021/22. We urgently needed to help our researchers build back momentum and protect years of progress.
Thanks to the continued support of people like you, we were able to work closely with researchers throughout the pandemic, supporting boundary-pushing research into better prostate cancer treatments.
- We saved all our 48 active research projects that were at risk of stalling or stopping due to the pandemic. This included the £400k+ CHRONOS project, which was trialling high-intensity ultrasound and cryotherapy (freezing cancer cells) to treat early-stage prostate cancer but was forced to shut down for several months.
- We funded three exciting new projects that could transform prostate cancer treatment and our understanding of the disease biology. One of these is led by Dr Victoria Dunne, whose team at Queen's University in Belfast is investigating a new method of delivering radiotherapy to extend the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer.
- We committed £13.2 million into research in 2022/23. This included large-scale grants like the Transformational Impact Awards, which tackle the biggest challenges in prostate cancer in order to maximise the speed and scale of research progress.
Our Specialist Nurses are here for you, via phone, email or live chat.
I cannot fault the service. I spoke to the same nurse twice who was outstanding both times. Her patience and empathy were exactly what I needed at the time. So informative and caring.
Our election manifesto
Some men, particularly Black men, have a much higher risk of getting prostate cancer. And far too many are dying needlessly, simply because they haven’t been told about their increased risk and what they can do about it.
In the lead up to the general election, we launched our manifesto. We set out how the next Government could save lives by proactively telling men at highest risk of prostate cancer about their risk and the tests available. This is particularly important for Black men, who often face inequity in the health system as well as an unequal risk of prostate cancer.
Through party conferences, parliamentary select committees, reports and in face-to-face meetings, we urged MPs to rethink diagnosis for these men, talking to key players at different levels of government.
Informing and empowering the men at highest risk to save lives
Whether it’s dealing with a diagnosis, choosing treatments, or managing side effects, prostate cancer can have a huge impact on the lives of men and those close to them. Our Specialist Nurses are there to offer support and information when men need it the most.
Throughout this uncertain period, we kept our lines and services fully open, ready to support the backlog of men who’d missed their diagnosis or saw their treatments delayed. As the number of people using our services returned to normal, we listened and tested new approaches to make sure our services adapted to men’s changing lives – and saw some remarkable results.
- Our Specialist Nurses were there to offer support over 15,000 times.
- We supported 28% more people with our sexual support service for men experiencing sexual side effects of treatments.
- Since December 2021, over 1,600 men have visited our wellbeing hub.
Help us share the Risk Checker
Check your own risk and please keep sharing the risk checker with the men in your life.
Shaping the health landscape here and now
We work to change systems from the inside so that men navigating prostate cancer today have a faster, fairer and better experience within the health system. We do this by supporting and collaborating with leading health professionals and decision makers.
Our award-winning Clinical Champions programme supports health professionals to bring in improvements for men. We recruit diverse health professionals and empower them to bring in improvements for men with or at risk of prostate cancer. We’ve supported over 80 Champions so far.
Every year, in their surgeries and hospitals, their innovations make a real difference to thousands of men and are shared and replicated by others.
This year alone, over 10,000 men have been helped by real-world improvements brought in by our most recently graduating Champions.
Thank you for all you do!
A huge heartfelt thank you to all supporters, fundraisers, partners, volunteers and everyone in this incredible team who has made it possible to find more of the 14,000 men and save lives.
From Jools Holland who Raised the Roof of the Royal Albert Hall – to the 1,800 people who wrote to MPs to tell them Boys need Bins – to the biggest club in football, Prostate FC – and every donor, runner, walker, golfer and anyone who shared the risk checker – thank you!
Find out more about the world we're building a path to:
