NCRI 2015
Networking and debating at NCRI 2015
Baroness Delyth Morgan of Drefelin, Wales, UK
It’s been really great bringing together the first trustee board for NCRI. So we’ve got a great group of trustees but also getting to know the staff team and working with Karen Kennedy who is the Director of NCRI. Obviously I took over as the Chair of the partnership from Harpal Kumar, Chief Exec of CR-UK, and he’s been great in giving me the support that I need to get underway in the new role. It’s an exciting time for NCRI, we’ve got a new cancer strategy coming to the fore now with quite significant areas of interest for NCRI. So it’s a very interesting time for us.
Can you tell us about the meeting that you chaired in June?
The first meeting that I chaired was the spring/summer meeting where we went through the entire NCRI programme and identified where there was the potential for more collaboration. It was absolutely fascinating to hear the diverse range of activities from an interest in living with or beyond cancer through to CTRad which is a very well established programme. And just the wealth of expertise and knowledge in the room from the partners because we bring together all the key cancer funders in the UK so getting everyone around the table is really impressive, actually, when you see that group coming together to formulate good ideas for the future.
What is your vision for NCRI?
I believe very strongly that in cancer research we can’t achieve anything on our own. What NCRI does is it brings together the leading cancer funders in the UK, so charities, government health departments, research councils, and these funders together fund about £500 million of research a year which is a phenomenal effort. But there are things that we identify where there is a particular need or a particular opportunity where the partners can come together and actually create progress much more quickly by acting together. That’s what’s so exciting about NCRI, it really is about everyone getting together and doing just that bit more to get to the patient benefit that much more quickly.
What involvement have you had with NCRI prior to this position?
I first got involved with NCRI through my role as Chief Exec of Breast Cancer Now. Breast Cancer Now was formed out of the merger of Breakthrough Breast Cancer and Breast Cancer Campaign. So we were involved in NCRI as a research funder. One of the key things that we’ve done is to set up a tissue bank and it has been really interesting to work with partners around the biobanking initiatives to ensure that we really are at the forefront of best practice, for example. So I’ve seen the benefit for the charity of getting involved in a wider partnership first hand and that’s helped me to really appreciate the benefits of NCRI more widely.
What do you regard as the highlights of this year’s NCRI conference?
The highlight of the conference, for me, has actually been the networking. It has been a great opportunity to meet and talk to people from all corners of the UK, all the different partners but also to meet the international speakers who have come over, braving the fog in many cases. So it has been great and I really enjoyed the consumer forum that I spoke at. The consumer presence here is really strong and that’s something very special about NCRI. It’s only really with the insight of the consumers, the perspective of patients, that we can be absolutely clear that we’re making a difference and doing it in the right way. So that has been really impressive actually. One of the most enjoyable, fun aspects of the conference has actually been the Breast Cancer Now debate that we hosted on Sunday night. It was really good fun to see the scientists and clinicians engaging in the debate and arguing for and against their position. So it was about prevention research versus the value of research into the causes of breast cancer. It was great to see a bit of passion getting in to the debate; that was a highlight, actually.