What is patient engagement in research funding

CCS aims to fund high impact research that is relevant to people affected by cancer and improves cancer outcomes. By engaging patients, survivors, thrivers, caregivers, and families (collectively, called "patients"), we can make sure people affected by cancer shape the way that research funding and funding decisions are made. It’s an active, collaborative role in governance, decision-making, research review, and other parts of research funding.

As someone with an experience of cancer, you have expertise that can help us ensure research funding decisions are relevant and impactful to people affected by cancer. Your input can help us make more equitable, relevant decisions in research funding. You can also help us share our research funding results more widely, so that more people affected by cancer learn about research in cancer. You are important in helping us build and share knowledge on engagement so that the way we fund research, and the research we fund, gets better and better.

Engaging people affected by cancer is a core approach to our research strategy and is critical to achieving our research goals. Patient partners are engaged in all stages of the research funding process at CCS to ensure the voices of people affected by cancer are embedded in our research programs. One main area to which you can contribute is governance and decision making, such as reviewing grant applications, setting priorities and developing new funding opportunities to ensure we are funding research that is truly relevant to the communities we serve.