About

Remission issuesThe Mission Remission hub was built for cancer survivors – we share hundreds of inspirational stories and practical strategies to move forward after cancer.

Looking to get started? Take a peek at our strategy pages.

What do we do?

Mission Remission supports cancer survivors move forward after treatment to live happy, healthy, independent lives. Our mission is to improve the experience of cancer recovery for every person across the country.
Mission Remission is a grassroot community-run charity. We help people by running an online platform, now with over 15k community members. We run support groups, online discussions, a book club, and an advocacy team.
Our campaigns support people and the NHS. 2022 aims include:

  • Speeding up diagnosis so people live longer and face fewer long-term consequences
  • Improving the experience of those dealing with cancer & transforming services so they’re person-centred
  • Helping people improve personal relationships with their clinical teams
  • Building a holistic survivor package & finding a partner to pilot this

WHY?

90% of people feel the time after cancer is just as traumatic as the diagnosis. You’re faced with the need to return to ‘normal’ life, when life no longer feels normal.

What Support is Available?

There's no national NHS service commissioned to address these issues. In fact, more widely, there’s sparse information on life after cancer. When life after cancer is mentioned, it's amongst advice on palliative care and prognosis rates. And it is just not appropriate to seek support about life after cancer from people who are still receiving treatment or who have terminal diagnoses.

So we wanted to do something about it.

Our vision is for everyone to live a happy, healthy, independent life after cancer and we plan to improve the experience of recovery for every cancer survivor in the UK.

Our People

Laura

Laura Fulcher – Founder 

As a 2x cancer survivor before the age of 35, Laura experienced the lack of information that exists after treatment finishes herself. So she founded the only national charity dedicated to supporting those recovering from cancer.  

She's a secondary school English teacher and has researched community-building, parental involvement, and narratives for change in education. Over the last six years, she's transferred her skills to the wonderful world of heath.

Since founding Mission Remission, she regularly speaks at conferences and supports health organisations to refocus on what’s actually important: serving people and improving their lives. She’s been a CCG lay member championing patient involvement; a trustee for the Patients Association, leads health data projects from a patient perspective; provides strategy consultancy to trusts, CCGs, and national organisations; and has run international projects in Africa.

She waited fifteen months for her first cancer diagnosis after 9 GP appointments, being repeatedly passed from one department to another and being turned away from A&E. She’s now a passionate health campaigner, writing for The Guardian, The Telegraph, Daily Mail, along with health journals like the HSJ and organisations like the Kings Fund. She also runs Mission Remission’s early diagnosis campaign, Something’s Not Right, calling for policy changes to prevent cancer delays.  For more of her writing, see here.

 

Hasan

Hasan Reza - Chair & Cancer Survivor

Hasan’s experience with cancer started pretty much as far back as memories go. He had a very rare and aggressive form of cancer in childhood that has left him with various challenges and complications. While he’s been in remission for almost 2 decades now, he’s found that people in remission are often left without much of a medical support network nor with much in the ways of regular touch points with their medical teams beyond yearly appointments in most cases.

He’s passionate about improving this, looking to encourage the formation of patient networks, working groups that involve patients and healthcare providers and many other such initiatives so that while remission is a wonderful milestone to reach its not an end point and support continues.

His professional background has been quite varied. Completing a degree in BioMedical Sciences at St George’s in Tooting (London), and via working in Royal Mail, he knew he always wanted to bring his career into the NHS. Working as a Project Manager in the Equality and Human Rights department of a trust took him to his current role of Head of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion.

 

Jane

Dr Jane Spurgeon - Clinical Advisor, Cancer Survivor, & Trustee

Jane is a GP and a breast cancer survivor. Since her diagnosis, she's refocused her attentions and now says yes to every opportunity that comes her way!

She has three young daughters and loves running, as you can find out from her tip on Parkrun!

Emily Hodge - Psychologist & Business Coach, Secretary & Trustee

Emily pic

Emily is a Psychologist and Business Mindset Coach helping small to medium size businesses develop their businesses in alignment with their customer value and the impact they want to make in the world, helping them to increase revenue and impact without burning out.

Emily is the Founder of the gentle life and business movement, supporting thousands of women across her programmes and platforms to create success without struggle and work without hustle.

As a Psychologist and Personal Performance Coach Emily blends her professional qualifications alongside her personal experiences of a less than gentle life to inspire others to create their version of gentle and successful living and working. 

She’s spoken globally on the topic of business and gentle living with long-time leaders and organisations through to fledging start ups, including with Sonos in Los Angeles, Music Executives, Journalists and Wellbeing and Creative Entrepreneurs.

Emma Robertson - Lived Experience Expert & Trustee

Emma

Emma Robertson was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 2013 and has been treated for metastatic cancer since 2015. She lives on a one hundred and twenty year old narrowboat in West London with her husband and their cat, is a keen gardener, and enjoys keeping bees. Emma campaigned with Just Treatment for others to be given NHS access to the CDK4/6 inhibitor Palbociclib. She was interviewed by Adrian Goldberg for BBC Radio’s “5 Live Investigates” and has subsequently spoken at various events, including the “Challenges to Preventing Cancer Cure” conference at The Francis Crick Institute in March 2019.

 

Morse

Andrew Morgan - Treasurer

Andrew, affectionately known as Morse to most, works for Merrill Lynch and specialises in esoteric global trade transactions. Like his namesake, he's a professional problem solver and fills his spare time cycling, watching interminably long documentaries, and is a keen plant collector. 

 Kas

Kasmyn Chen - Campaign Analysis & Trustee

Kas led the analysis for our Something's Not Right early diagnosis campaign. She has spent her NHS career working on patient-centred workstreams. She’s worked on projects examining patients’ relationship with their health data and developing data standards to support patient care. She led the patient workstream for the LHCR core standard and is now the lead analyst for a shared care record system. Kas has two cats and is an expert on coffee machines.

Photo of Helen Mee

Helen Mee - Charity Leadership Specialist &Trustee

Helen is a highly experienced charity leader with over fifteen years in the UK non-profit sector, working for national cancer charities and within infrastructure bodies and grant-making. A self-motivated, ambitious, and committed professional, Helen has a passion for developing new programmes and projects. She has recently completed a Clore Social Fellowship. Helen is currently The Clare Foundation's Head of Charity Operations. By supporting Buckinghamshire based charities, businesses, statutory bodies and individuals to come together to deliver projects; Helen aims to achieve the Foundation's ambition "of making Buckinghamshire the happiest county in the UK". Prior to joining the Clare Foundation Helen spent over twelve years’ in third sector management and service delivery roles; working for several national charities. Her areas of special interest include: designing/ delivering health and wellbeing interventions and UK-wide cancer awareness and education programmes.

Ryan

Ryan Pickett – Software Developer & Trustee

Ryan is a full-stack developer, primarily working on Java backends, with over 15 years of commercial development experience.

Image of Bal Nanray

Balwinder Nanray - Patient Advocate & Trustee

Bal has been involved with the NHS Cancer Improvement and Collaboration steering committee since 2020 and has been instrumental in ensuring that the patient voice is paramount to tangible changes/improvements for the wider community. She is also a patient voice for the NHS East of England Cancer Alliance and has appeared in campaign videos, speaking at events to medical staff and at public engagements.  In addition to this Bal is also part of a Breast Cancer research project with CRUK in London, which looks to develop kinder treatments other than chemotherapy and radiotherapy.