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One Voice for Radiotherapy: Creating World Radiotherapy Awareness Day
We all know that radiotherapy (or radiation therapy) is vital for curing cancer, alleviating symptoms, and improving quality of life. Access to radiotherapy is directly linked to improved survival for many cancers. Radiotherapy is also a highly cost-effective cancer treatment. However, around the world significant regional and national disparities persist. Reasons include inadequate services, geographical barriers, insufficient workforce and lack of awareness of modern radiotherapy amongst patients, the general community, healthcare professionals and policymakers. The purpose of creating a radiotherapy awareness day is to provide a platform and opportunity for the global radiotherapy community to join in focusing the attention of the general public, media and government on the vital importance of radiotherapy.
The theme for WRAD for the next three years is “One Voice for Radiotherapy”. WRAD will launch on 7th September 2025, the date the first patient was treated on a linear accelerator.
Reaching this Point
We announced the concept of World Radiotherapy Awareness Day (WRAD) in November, 2024, at an event during London Global Cancer Week. The support from the radiotherapy community (societies, professional bodies, patient advocate groups and individuals) was overwhelming. A subsequent planning meeting was held in March, 2025, during which the WRAD date, logo, theme and campaign messages were announced. Surveys before and throughout the events encouraged widespread input on decisions about these key campaign features. The planning events were both in-person and virtual, running over two time periods to enhance global accessibility. We had over 800 registrants at the two meetings from all parts of the globe, a testament to the enthusiasm for the WRAD initiative. Various society representatives, radiotherapy professionals and patient advocates were invited to speak to the importance of WRAD and showcase engagement initiatives. All major professional radiotherapy societies have been approached to understand their goals for joining the WRAD movement and how they’ll get involved. We’ve also secured significant sponsorship from industry supporters, but of course we need more to ensure WRAD’s sustainability!
Moving Forward
The next steps will include building the WRAD website, social media channels and providing resources and inspiration for others to get involved. We’re planning events and promotion of WRAD at major radiotherapy conferences. We ask all readers to please sign up to this important initiative via the link or QR code in this article to receive updates. We hope you and your teams will get involved to make the first (and subsequent) WRADs an overwhelming success. Please talk about WRAD, share with your colleagues and think about what you/your group will do to mark the launch of WRAD on the week starting September 7th.
We believe that WRAD’s global reach and inclusive approach position it as a unifying movement to champion the lifesaving and life-improving potential of radiotherapy.
Please join us! Together, let’s raise One Voice for Radiotherapy.
Acknowledgement
The WRAD Committee:
Sandra Turner - Co-Chair, Radiation Oncologist, Australia
Katie Wakeham - Co-chair, Clinical Oncologist, UK
Darien Laird - Executive Director Global Coalition for Radiotherapy, Switzerland
Lucinda Morris - Radiation Oncologist, Australia
Michelle Leech - Radiation Therapist, Ireland
Sarah Quinlan - Charity Director Radiotherapy UK, UK
Contact
Email: contact@worldradiotherapy.org
Website: www.worldradiotherapy.org
Social Media: X | LinkedIn | YouTube | Facebook
World Radiotherapy
Awareness Day Website
