A year in review: an unprecedented year for bowel cancer

Today we launch our annual report, which reflects on all our accomplishments, successes and significant milestones we've achieved together over the last year.

Thanks to incredible people like you, we're closer than ever before to a future where nobody dies of bowel cancer. Last year we reached and supported more people than we've done before, we shone a spotlight on bowel cancer and its red-flag symptoms, and we raised more money to support our work.

Here are some of our highlights of 2022

We funded four new research projects

Research is key to improving diagnosis, treatment, and care for bowel cancer. Over the last five years, we’ve invested £1.3 million in bowel cancer research, helping us to better understand the disease, and ultimately save lives.

We awarded grants worth over £93,000 to four new research projects beginning in 2023, aimed at increasing early diagnosis of bowel cancer. The new research projects will be looking into a range of different areas that have the potential to improve early diagnosis – from researching new methods of diagnosing early-stage bowel cancer, to looking at reasons people don't take part in screening.

Read more about our research grants

Our #GetOnARoll campaign put symptoms in millions of homes around the UK

#GetOnARoll is our ground-breaking campaign to get supermarkets and brands to print bowel cancer symptoms on toilet roll packaging. Putting this vital information in the bathroom where people might experience red flag symptoms like blood in their poo could be lifesaving.

This brilliant collaboration was sparked by M&S employee and bowel cancer patient Cara Hoofe. M&S understood the importance of spreading symptom awareness far and wide, so used our launch to call on all other supermarkets to follow their lead.

We secured eight partners by the end of the year, including Aldi, Asda, Co-op, M&S, Morrisons, Sainsbury's, Waitrose, and Andrex®, bringing lifesaving information into more than one in three households in the UK.  

Find out more about our #GetOnARoll campaign

We provided over 1.8 million moments of support to people affected by bowel cancer and their loved ones

We reached more than 2,800 people through 86 volunteer-led bowel cancer awareness talks for workplaces and community groups. Nine out of ten participants said that they were more likely to contact their GP if they experienced symptoms.

We held eight live online events for people affected by bowel cancer, covering topics including living with a stoma, living well with advanced bowel cancer and living with bowel cancer as a younger person. 97% of those attending would recommend our online events and 84% said they felt more informed about living with bowel cancer.

Our 'Ask the Nurse' email service provides information from qualified healthcare professionals and signposts people to further support when they have questions or concerns about bowel cancer. This year, we grew the service by recruiting two new nurses and responded to 563 enquiries. 83% of users would recommend the service to someone else.

We now have four Facebook groups providing a safe space for people to access help, support and a place to talk with others experiencing similar issues. There are more than 1,500 members across the four groups, with 700 people joining this year.

Our online forum, a friendly place to find out more about bowel cancer and connect with others, continued to provide support 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. We welcomed over one thousand new members, growing our membership to 7,368 people. Members and guests made more than half a million visits to the forum across the year. 75% of forum users in a survey said they found it useful and almost 90% would recommend it to others.

Find out more about the support we offer for people affected by the disease

We launched the very first All-Party Parliamentary Group (APPG) on Bowel Cancer

We were delighted to launch the very first APPG on Bowel Cancer. Chaired by Ben Lake MP for Ceredigion, the group has cross-party representation and was formally established on 25 October 2022.

We're working with the APPG to significantly raise the profile of bowel cancer issues within parliament and help to improve patient outcomes, promote best practice and encourage better collaboration between patients, parliamentarians, government and the NHS.

Learn more about the APPG on Bowel Cancer

A huge thank you to all our partners and supporters who are dedicated to improving the lives of everyone affected by bowel cancer.

Looking ahead to 2023

In just in a few weeks' time, we'll be launching our new strategy to ensure more people are diagnosed early, with an ambitious goal to increase the percentage of people diagnosed at stages 1 and 2 to over 50% where it currently stands at 36%.

It's a stark reality that while most people will survive early-stage bowel cancer, most people in the UK are diagnosed at stage 3 or 4, when it's harder to treat. Survival rates at stage 1 are above 90%, but at stage 4 they plummet to under 10%.

Put simply, if we could achieve a stage-shift in diagnosis from late to early, we could give around 28,000 people every year a better prognosis, kinder treatment, and the chance not only to survive their bowel cancer, but to thrive beyond the diagnosis. It's an ambitious goal, and one we're determined to achieve.

• Sign up to our monthly e-newsletter and be the first to hear about our new strategy and exciting plans for 2023 and beyond
• Download the annual report
• Find out more about what we do
• Learn about the symptoms of bowel cancer