Introducing our new involvement manager

Tell us about yourself

Hello, I’m Zoe, the new Involvement Manager at Breast Cancer Now.

I live near Sheffield with my partner Sam, and our beautiful cat Mimi. In my spare time I enjoy being out in nature, bouldering and running (very slowly!). I’m really lucky to live close to the Peak District, so there are lots of great places to walk, run and climb nearby! Very excitingly, I’m also busy planning my wedding. Sam and I will be getting married in the Rocky Mountains in September next year.

My background is in involving people with lived experience in shaping NHS services. Before starting in my new role, I worked on Breast Cancer Now’s Service Pledge programme for 3 years. Through the Service Pledge I supported NHS Trusts to gather feedback on their breast cancer services, and brought patients and healthcare professionals together to work as equal partners, to co-design service improvements.

Before that, I worked for Healthwatch, a statutory organisation that champions patient involvement in the design of NHS services and provides insights to NHS providers so they can be shaped and improved by lived experience.

Randomly, I have a master’s degree in museum curation, so never really planned to work in involvement for a cancer charity – but I’m so glad that I do!

Why are you joining the team?

Having worked on the Service Pledge programme for 3 years, I was ready for a new challenge. I knew that I didn’t want to leave Breast Cancer Now (it really is such a great place to work!), so I was so excited when the Involvement Manager opportunity came up. It’s a role that aligns really well with my skills and experience!

What are you excited about for the next year?

I’m really excited to build on all of the amazing work Susanna and Sarah have done to champion involvement at Breast Cancer Now. I hope to be able to continue to build on their work so that involving people with lived experience, and involving a range of different voices is seen as a crucial part of guiding and shaping everything we do as a charity. I’m also really excited to work more closely with Sarah. She’s so talented! And of course, our amazing Voices community!

What does involvement mean to you?

While working on the Service Pledge programme, I saw first-hand just how much people with lived experience brought to the service improvement discussions with the healthcare professionals. They were experts by their experience, and brought ideas and perspectives to the discussions that really challenged the assumptions held by the surgeons, nurses and oncologists around the table. Their contributions made the healthcare professionals think differently about how they did things. It was amazing to see!

They shaped what the improvements looked like – things like making sure the surgeons wrote letters directly to the patient and explained any jargon, rather than writing to the GP and sending a copy to the patient. Or ensuring nurses on the surgical wards were adequately trained and knew how to support breast cancer patients. And making sure breast care nurses called all newly diagnosed secondary breast cancer patients 2 weeks after their diagnosis to talk about their support needs. Some of these things sound small, but made a huge difference to the experience of patients. None of these changes and improvements would have been made without patient involvement!