Meet Our Clinical Champions
In April 2021, 21 Health Care Professionals from across the UK became our inaugural Clinical Champions for Prostate Cancer.
Our Clinical Champions are leading improvement projects that aim to transform care for people living with or affected by prostate cancer over the next 18 months. You can read how they're progressing these projects six months into the programme and the impact they're already seeing.
For more information or to get in touch with any of the Clinical Champions please email [email protected].
Mr Alex Rawlinson
Job title: Consultant Urologist
Location: NHS Fife
Project: Alex aims to make changes that will improve the diagnostic and assessment pathways with the view to increase rates of early diagnosis of prostate cancer.
Mr Edward Calleja
Job title: Urology Consultant
Location: East Sussex healthcare NHS
Project: Ed will implement a survivorship programme to address the unmet needs of prostate cancer patients through:
- Transforming the erectile dysfunction clinic into a more holistic sexual wellbeing clinic
- Setting up a dedicated active surveillance programme
- Launching a fitness assessment clinic as part of the preoperative optimisation programme supporting patients physically and mentally prior to their surgery.
Dr Amarnath Challapalli
Job title: Consultant Clinical Oncologist
Location: University Hospitals Bristol and Weston NHS Foundation Trust
Project: Amarnath wants to ensure equity of access to PSMA PET in promoting evidence based prostate cancer management. This includes detecting recurrence of prostate cancer and Lutetium PSMA radioligand therapy when approved.
Dr Louise Lee
Job title: Senior Radiology Registrar
Location: University Hospitals of Leicester NHS Trust
Project: Louise hopes to streamline the diagnostic pathway for prostate cancer services within the East Midlands region.
Ms Clare Waymont
Job title: Urology Advanced Nurse Practitioner
Location: Royal Wolverhampton Hospitals
Project: Clare aims to introduce further improvements to the diagnostic pathway to achieve faster diagnosis of prostate cancer for patients.
Mr Samuel Worster
Job title: Advanced Practitioner Prostate Brachytherapy
Location: Norfolk and Norwich University Hospital
Project: Sam wants to introduce a permanent prostate-rectal spacing service for prostate cancer patients undergoing radiotherapy treatments.
Mr Nick Burns-Cox
Job title: Consultant Urologist
Location: Taunton and Somerset FT NHS Trust
Project: Nick aims to improve the quality of data and the use of a dashboard in the Southwest which will be used to highlight improvements needed along the prostate cancer pathway. Nick hopes to transform this into a national tool to ensure national quality of prostate cancer services and support operational management and planning.
Mr Nikhil Vasdev
Job title: Consultant Urological Surgeon / Associate Medical Director for Cancer Services
Location: East and North NHS Trust
Project: Nikhil’s will focus on Robotic Prostatectomy, with the aim to develop protocols that allow nerve sparing techniques, which will reduce side effects whilst most importantly allowing optimisation and improvement in prostate cancer oncological control.
Dr Darren Leaning
Job title: Consultant Clinical Oncologist and Northern Cancer Alliance Clinical Lead for Urological Cancers
Location: South Tees NHS Foundation Trust
Project: Darren aims to:
- Expand on prostate cancer promotion and awareness with a strategic campaign.
- Explore the utility of Artificial Intelligence to improve prostate cancer pathway efficiencies in both scheduling and delivery of diagnostics.
- Build even stronger partnerships between hospital Trusts, making the best use of the region’s expertise to homogenise consistent high quality patient decision making.
- Develop capacity across the region to accommodate new evidence-based treatments.
Dr Mark Robinson
Job title: Consultant Radiologist
Location: Aneurin Bevan University Health Board
Project: Mark wants to:
- Develop a dedicated primary care referral form allowing patients to go straight to test
- Audit mpMRI quality, to include each MRI scanner used in each Health Board
- Standardise mpMRI reporting with support for those professionals reporting
- Standardise biopsy techniques in each Health Board and ensure access to transperineal biopsy.
Dr Oliver Hulson
Job title: Consultant Radiologist
Location: Leeds teaching hospitals NHS Trust
Project: Olly hopes to work alongside colleagues in general practice to address misconceptions regarding over-diagnosis of prostate cancer and their perceived risks of prostate biopsy.
Mr Tim Dudderidge
Job title: Consultant Urological Surgeon
Location: University Hospital Southampton
Project: Tim wants to:
- Reduce the harm in treating prostate cancer, through offering active surveillance or focal therapy for suitable men.
- Offer early testing with imaging rather than PSA tests, which may give a new momentum for screening for prostate cancer.
Mr Tom Leslie
Job title: Consultant Urologist Surgeon
Location: Milton Keynes University Hospital NHS Trusts
Project: Tom aims to improve the diagnostic pathway by developing a one stop MRI and local anaesthetic transperineal biopsy (LATP) service.
Mr Vishwanath Hanchanale
Job title: Consultant Urological and Robotic Surgeon
Location: Liverpool University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Project: Vish hopes to streamline the prostate cancer diagnostic services across the area to improve the patient journey.
Mr William Cross
Job title: Consultant Urologist
Location: Leeds Teaching Hospitals NHS Trust
Project: Bill wants to develop an IT system which will assist and guide healthcare teams to provide the latest therapies and record real-world clinical outcomes which will inform future services improvements. This is focused on providing the patient with a personalised treatment pathway with access to the latest information, support and guidance.
Dr Stephen Mangar
Job title: Consultant Clinical Oncologist
Location: Imperial College Healthcare NHS Trust
Project: Steve aims to:
- Develop protocols and training in order to implement SABR into routine clinical practice for both radical and palliative treatment.
- Develop functional imaging for prostate cancer staging, so that it becomes more readily available for staging high risk prostate cancer.
- Use actigraphy to help understand the impact various treatments have on sleep quality.
Dr Iztok Caglic
Job title: Consultant Radiologist
Location: Addenbrooke’s Hospital, Cambridge University Hospitals
Project: Iztok wants to offer men presenting with suspected prostate cancer a novel one stop comprehensive imaging appointment. This will improve each patient’s experience and will facilitate diagnostic-workup to meet the national 28-day cancer pathway.
Dr Fabio Castiglione
Job title: Andrology post CCT Fellow
Location: University College of London Hospitals
Project: Fabio aims to develop new clinical pathways and deliver significant improvements to patients suffering from erectile dysfunction and sexual dysfunction following prostate cancer treatments.
Ms Sian Griffiths
Job title: Consultant Radiographer
Location: Urology Specialist- Royal United Hospital Bath NHS Foundation Trust
Project: Sian hopes to implement a dedicated radiotherapy prehabilitation clinic to provide access to specialist information and support from a range of professionals on treatments, side effects, sexual wellbeing, fatigue, diet and lifestyle and mental wellbeing.
Dr Janet Brown
Job title: Professor of Translational Medical Oncology, Honorary Consultant in Medical Oncology
Location: Sheffield Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust
Project: Janet wants to use recent guidelines which she was involved in creating to optimise bone health of prostate cancer patients regionally, with the intention to roll this out nationally as a significant service improvement to enhance the quality of life for patients with prostate cancer.
Mr Will Kinnaird
Job title: Urology Research and Development Therapeutic Radiographer
Location: University College London Hospitals
Project: Will aims to draw up national guidance for managing sexual dysfunction in men with advanced disease. The aim is to provide a template for healthcare professionals and patients to help address this growing need.
The Prostate Cancer Improvement Programmes are partly supported by grants from Astellas Pharma Ltd, Bayer UK and Roche Products Ltd. None of these organisations have had any control over the educational content of this activity.