MPs take action on our secondary breast cancer campaign

With your support we've been taking our 'Secondary. Not second rate.' campaign to MPs across the UK. We spoke to Sam, our Policy and Campaigns Officer, about inspiring MPs to take action.

Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt at the Conservative Party conference

What is the ‘Secondary. Not second rate’ campaign about?

‘Secondary. Not second rate.’ is a year-long campaign to make sure people diagnosed with secondary breast cancer no longer receive second rate care.

There are so many uncertainties when you’re diagnosed with secondary breast cancer. We want to make sure that people can be certain they will get the care and support they need.

What have you uncovered so far?

In July, we launched a report highlighting the issues people face getting a diagnosis of secondary breast cancer. We found that only 8% of people expected it to be secondary breast cancer when they were diagnosed.

In September, we launched the second report, focusing on data gathered in hospitals.

We discovered that only one third of Hospital Trusts in England are fully recording when people are diagnosed with secondary breast cancer.

So what have you done with all this data?

We took both of these reports to the political party conferences (including Labour, Conservative, and the Scottish National Party) to share our findings with decision makers and, more importantly, to let them know what they can do to help.

Taking our campaign to the Conservative Party conference

Following the conferences, we hosted an event in Parliament to mark Secondary Breast Cancer Awareness Day (13th October), as another way to talk to decision makers about secondary cancer. At the conferences and the event in Parliament we were joined by women living with secondary breast cancer who shared their experiences of what it is like to live with the disease.

We were able to meet with lots of MPs and MSPs at the conferences, such as Jeremy Hunt, Nicola Sturgeon and Jeremy Corbyn.

Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn with Breast Cancer Care 

Following our Parliamentary event Jo Churchill MP asked the Prime Minister Theresa May about secondary breast cancer during the weekly Prime Minister's Questions session.

There’s still a lot to do with this campaign, and we’ll be releasing more findings from our research over the next few months.

How did you get MPs to take action?

At the party conferences we had a really eye catching exhibition stand to make sure MPs and other attendees noticed us and wanted to hear what we were talking about. Our exhibition stand, designed by Hartnell Creative Communications, used a giant metronome to convey the idea that time is uncertain when you have secondary breast cancer.

We were joined by our amazing volunteers at all of these events to share their experience of living with secondary breast cancer, so it’s difficult for MPs and MSPs to say no to them!

How can I help support the campaign?

If you haven’t already, you can sign up to join our campaigns network. We’ll send you email updates about our campaigning and ways to get involved.

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