Our impact for people living with cancer
We fund healthcare professionals
Macmillan Professionals are the beating heart of our charity, helping people living with cancer live life as fully as they can. They are there for the bad days and they tell it like it is. But we've got the skills and experience to make the bad days and nights just a little bit easier.
One of our main priorities is to ensure more people living with cancer have good conversations with healthcare professionals about their all-round needs and concerns. A key way we’re making this happen is by funding more cancer professionals.
In 2024, the number of Macmillan Professionals continue to grow, with a total of 10,881 posts spanning a wide range of roles across the UK. Last year, we invested £596,000 in over 700 grants to Macmillan Professional to fund education, wellbeing and development opportunities.
We provide healthcare services
We want everyone living with cancer to get the treatment and support they need. That's why we work with the NHS and other partners to deliver services where they are needed most.
In 2024 we facilitated 65,000 Holistic Needs Assessments for people living with cancer. This means they were able to have a structured conversation with a healthcare professional about their needs and concerns and receive a personalised care and support plan.
Our Macmillan local cancer Information and Support Centres offer a range of clinical, emotional and practical support. In 2024 an estimated 105,000 people diagnosed with cancer used our Information and Support Centres.
We provide cancer information and support
We believe everyone living with cancer should have access to the information and support they need to understand their cancer and make important decisions about their care.
In 2024:
- We supported an estimated 484,000 people through our Macmillan Support Line, information centres, Online Community, website, email support and telephone Buddies service.
- Approximately 700,000 people received support from our Macmillan nurses, support workers and palliative care nurses as they went through diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up and end of life care.
We provide social, emotional and practical support services
"When you get a cancer diagnosis, you need to have a big support team. There’s no doubt the Macmillan Buddy I have is a big support."- Keith, diagnosed with liver cancer
We work in local communities to reach as many people living with cancer as we can.
Working with our amazing volunteers, our Macmillan Buddies provide emotional support to people living with cancer when they need it most – a free service that matches people with a volunteer who understands what they are going through. In 2024, Macmillan Buddies supported over 3,600 people living with cancer in the comfort of their home.
We campaign for betterness
During the 2024 Westminster General Election, we called for a revolution in cancer care.
Using our latest analysis, we outlined how UK cancer care was ‘stuck in the noughties’, with survival rates lagging decades behind other countries.
We warned that cancer waiting times across the UK were among the worst on record. We highlighted how, if UK survival rates matched the best in Europe, thousands more people with cancer in the UK would survive for at least five years.
And we invited the public to contact their local parliamentary candidates and ask them to commit to transforming cancer care if they were elected – championing this in Westminster, or within the governments of each devolved nation.
Our demand for a revolution in cancer care was repeated across more than a hundred pieces of media coverage and social media content, potentially being seen by up to two-thirds (66%) of Great Britain’s adult population, and our message reached key government decision makers and politically engaged audiences.
Supported by our campaigners across the UK, we made it clear that cancer care was at breaking point and that better was possible. Our campaign helped achieve an important breakthrough. The new UK government committed to delivering the national cancer plan for England that we called for.