Improving Outcomes for Men Impacted by Cancer Award 2021

Introduction 

As highlighted in the National Cancer Strategy 2017-2026, advances in cancer treatment are greatly increasing survival rates for patients. There are now approximately 200,000 people in Ireland living with and beyond cancer. However, the consequences of cancer and its treatment can result in significant, often lifelong, effects on health and quality of life.

In line with this, and as part of its strategy, the Irish Cancer Society is dedicated to drive forward initiatives which seek to improve the experiences, quality of life and outcomes of all those impacted by cancer.

As part of our commitment, we have funded a number of survivorship and survivorship research programmes, including the recent Women’s Health Initiative. We are now seeking to develop and pilot a dedicated two-year integrated survivorship research programme aimed at better engaging with and supporting men in Ireland post cancer treatment. With approximately 13,000 men diagnosed with invasive cancer every year, men in Ireland are more likely to get cancer compared to women, and are 30% more likely to die from their malignancy. Furthermore, at a recent stakeholder workshop held to examine the unmet needs of men affected by cancer in Ireland, contributors highlighted the glaring issues and disparities facing male cancer survivors, and particularly emphasised the challenge of supporting men to engage with cancer survivorship services to derive an optimal outcome for their illness.

As part of this new initiative, we seek to address the key gaps and unmet survivorship needs of men affected by cancer. In particular, an important aspect of this programme should involve demonstrating how to improve the survivorship supports and services for underserved communities of men who have not traditionally been the focus of such initiatives and are recognised as experiencing disparities in terms of cancer incidence, prognosis, outcome and/or quality of life. Unfortunately, there are many such communities but these might include, for example, members of the Travelling community, the LGBT+ community, ethnic minority and migrant communities, communities with social disadvantage and/or socio-economic challenges, or specific mental health issues likely to impact their ability to have a positive outcome from a cancer diagnosis.

The focus of this programme should be centred on provision of evidence to drive improvement in the survivorship supports and services for those cancers that yield a poorer prognosis and for which there are still considerable challenges and resources issues, these include (but are not limited to): head & neck, lung, oesophageal, bladder cancer, metastatic disease etc.

Applications from multidisciplinary teams are invited to tender a 2-year programme that can begin to drive an evidence basis as to how to practically address these key survivorship priorities and issues. The programme, which will be underpinned by a robust research infrastructure, will coordinate resources, be readily accessible and seek to develop and improve evidence-based post-treatment services for men affected by cancer among the target groups/populations articulated in the application.

As a prelude to this funding call, a stakeholder workshop was organised. The workshop brought together representative stakeholders from a number of areas, such as men’s health groups, healthcare professionals, men who have been impacted by cancer, and organisations representing underserved communities. All stakeholders worked together to discuss the key unmet survivorship needs of men affected by cancer and to develop a set of key guiding principles *see infographic below, which must form a core aspect to the research and learnings this initiative seeks to support. 

Please see the Guidelines for Applicants for more information

Funding

The Improving Outcomes for Men Impacted by Cancer Award 2021 will provide funding of approximately €300,000 towards a project of up to a minimum of 24 months’ duration.

Please see the Guidelines for Applicants for more information

How to apply

Applications must be completed and submitted through the Irish Cancer Society Gateway Grant Tracker online system. In order to submit an online application, you are required to register at the following address: https://grants.cancer.ie

Deadline for applications: 3:00pm, Wednesday, 22nd September 2021 

Key dates*

* Dates are subject to change. Applicants must be available to attend the interview online.