Cancer Insight Panel

This is a video of one of the Cancer Insights Panel members, Manisha introducing themselves and explaining their motivations for taking part in the Cancer Insights Panel program.

"……. listening to patients and their families."

Patients are at the heart of everything we do, and insights from patients or their carers are invaluable to us as they are coming from the voice that matters the most.

Hi, I’m Manisha and I’m from Leicester and I’ve got two kids, er, .. ... two little girls aged 9 and 5.

I’ve worked in cancer and promoting it and raising awareness about it, but I’ve also been touched personally through the story of my brother who I lost at the age of 35 to advanced bowel cancer. He passed away in, on the 27th December. So yeah, just over six months ago.

I used to raise awareness about mesothelioma, er, which is an asbestos related cancer to the armed forces and veterans and military community. I’ve got a bit of Asian background, er, connected in with the Asian community, um, and so yeah. So, there’s ways that I can support er, and reach out to those groups er, which you know Pfizer might not be able to kind of easily access, but um, I can help and support, support with that

I think Pfizer were taken aback by my story about how I’ve supported the mesothelioma community. How I’d been raising awareness about bowel cancer. My brother’s key sort of thing for us was to raise awareness about bowel cancer, but during that process, I’ve had so many people thanking me for saying to me like oh, thank, you know thank you I’ve gonna go get checked out, I’m gonna go and follow, follow up with my doctor, er, and so I thought there’s ways that I can help. If I can help and support patients um, you know I’d love, love to do that and as a peoples’ person, er, I’m really passionate about making a difference

The panels are made up of people with an experience of what it is like to live with cancer, either as a patient carer or family member.

We meet as a group and explore the non-clinical experience of patients and their loved ones, so that we can understand where the gaps are but also identify areas of best practice for sharing.

As well as areas that we may wish to develop further, our goal is to also share what we hear from the panel members with Patient Organisations and clinicians working in the NHS, developing solutions that will enhance the experience of cancer patients in the future.

Since launch in 2022, we have run two Cancer Insights Panels listening to many patients from a range of cancer types and we are currently recruiting an ALK-positive lung cancer panel for 2025.