The United Kingdom Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (UKASCC) is a national charity supporting the development of supportive oncology research, education and services across all four nations.
We have eight current strands of activity:
- Supporting clinical research
- Education
- Developing best practice guidelines
- Enhanced Supportive Care
- Opioid therapy in cancer care
- Development of a fellowship in supportive care
- Mental health and emotional wellbeing in supportive care
- Communications and marketing (including fundraising)
The United Kingdom Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (UKASCC) – Background
UKASCC was created in late 2021 with a specific mission – to implement and grow supportive oncology services across the United Kingdom, recognising the growing challenge of delivering outstanding supportive care services for people affected by cancer and their families.
The challenge
Advancements in cancer treatments over the last 20 years mean that many more people are now surviving cancer, in some instances curatively, but for others living for many years with clinical managed but incurable cancers. Whatever the prognosis, it is critical to support individuals to enjoy as good a quality of life as possible, support their general health and wellbeing, and ensure that recurrent disease is spotted quicky and effectively treated, whilst also managing ongoing acute side effects and potential late consequences of treatment.
Data from Macmillan and the national Cancer Registry indicate that today nearly 3 million people are living with cancer in the UK. By 2030, that number will rise to 4 million and by 2040, it’s predicted to be 5.2 million. Therefore, the care of these people, the management of their problems they have associated with both the disease itself and the consequences of cancer treatments is becoming ever more important.
The implications of this demographic shift are profound for cancer services both within and outside the NHS. Supportive Oncology is an emerging discipline that is refocusing and reframing clinical activity across the entire cancer pathway to ensure people affected by cancer are supported to “live well” both during treatment and beyond. UKASCC aims to represent professionals working in supportive oncology aligning the professional “voice” behind evidence-based education and training, effective service redesign, ambitious and dynamic clinical research, and opportunities for networking, career and workforce development, and significant influence internationally.
The phrase “living with and beyond cancer” has been adopted widely to describe the status of patients moving through the different stages of the cancer pathway, and in parallel with the established discipline of palliative and end-of-life care, these represent the foundational areas of practice that underpin supportive oncology.
Aligned to this, supportive oncology embraces integrative oncology, evidence-based complimentary therapies, services to support alcohol and smoking cessation, physiotherapy, diet and nutrition and other allied health professional disciplines, as well as the clinical management of pain and symptoms in ‘enhanced supportive care’ clinics, which might include managing nausea, the prescription of opioids and other pharmacological interventions, supporting oncological frailty in older patients and tailored services to support other special population groups, and psycho-oncology services to help support mental health.
Our Work
As supportive oncology represents a new discipline in cancer care, thus UKASCC is a new organisation, looking to the success of other multicentre and multidisciplinary charities such as UKONS (United Kingdom Oncology Nursing Society) for inspiration. Nevertheless, the charity has got off to a flying start. In 2024, our principal focus was establishing our brand identity, organisational development, and delivering our best ever national conference.
Our reach:
The number of professionals joining UKASCC everyday is increasing exponentially. Membership of UKASCC is free and individuals are required to complete a short questionnaire on the UKASCC website to join. In the first instance, becoming a member automatically signs you up to our irregular newsletter which speaks to opportunities within each of our workstreams. We hope to have some members-only content on this website in the coming years.
Our conference is attended annually by +200 in person delegates and around 100 online delegates from across the United Kingdom. A small proportion of attendees were international.
We have delivered three webinars over the past twelve months, attended by 500 each, and once uploaded to You Tube, recordings of the webinars are usually viewed 50+ times. Webinars tackle complex and specific specialist clinical topics such as the clinical management of Oral Mucositis.
Members of UKASCC have recently completed a book: “The UKASCC Handbook of Supportive Care in Cancer” [Routledge, May 2025]. We are expecting this key text to rapidly and exponentially increase interest in the organisation across the UK and beyond. The book was edited by Richard Berman, Ben Heyworth and Ashique Ahamed.
You can find and purchase a copy of the book here: https://amzn.eu/d/1qgFUft
