March 24th: Raising the profile of Radiotherapy!

Radiotherapy is a small but mighty modality with a dedicated specialist workforce. It is needed by half of all cancer patients, but barely a third will receive it. Radiotherapy faces consistent under funding and remains poorly understood. How can we change this? For March’s MedRadJClub we are calling on the community to learn about inequities affecting radiotherapy and discuss how we can raise its profile with patients and public, policy makers, and our healthcare colleagues. Chat themes: Radiotherapy has been around for over 100 years – why do you think it is still misunderstood? Radiotherapy advocacy has different audiences and settings (e.g. policy makers, patients, research funders, public, GP surgeries etc) What can we do to improve understanding about radiotherapy within different areas? What do you think are the most effective ways to raise the profile of radiotherapy locally, nationally and globally? What do you do (or what would you like to do) to support the radiotherapy advocacy movement? This month’s paper is “The Role of the Global Coalition for Radiotherapy in Political Advocacy for Radiation Therapy as a Cost-Effective and Underfunded Modality Around the World” by Price et al, 2021 from the Red Journal.