Excellence in Communications – Payers/Policy Makers

Summary of work

Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in men with 40,000 men diagnosed and 10,000 men sadly dying from the disease each year. Despite this, there are very few treatments for men with advanced cancer due to the historic underfunding of research into the disease. Abiraterone (Zytiga) is a new type of hormone therapy which can extend and improve the lives of men with advanced prostate cancer that have stopped responding to other treatments. Despite this, and despite recognising the benefits of the drug, it was rejected for use on the NHS by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) in February 2012 and the Scottish Medicines Consortium (SMC) in March on the grounds of cost. This was a bitter blow to thousands of men who have no remaining treatment choices. Working closely with our supporters, we launched a nationwide campaign, engaging with people affected by prostate cancer, the media, politicians and policy makers to overturn these decisions. Following this successful campaign, abiraterone is now available on the NHS for men across the UK – an important victory for men with advanced prostate cancer.

Judges comments

Communication with policy makers and payers is an incredibly difficult category to judge because we’re looking for an amazing ability to communicate, combined with an impressive ability to influence the environment and shape outcomes. Prostate Cancer UK demonstrated this in spades with their campaign for abiraterone.