End-June DiCE was pleased to take part in the ‘Rally on Research’ event – an online international two-day conference that brought together 500 people from over 35 countries from the patient, global research and clinical community to address increasing rates of colon and rectal cancers in adults aged 50 and under. The event was organised by ‘Fight CRC’ – an American organisation with whom DiCE collaborates. It covered discussions on screening rates around the world, treatment and care, research funding, and progress and needs within early age onset of colorectal cancer (EOCRC) to get things moving toward permanently reversing these increases and saving lives.

The Fight CRC team invited Catie Young, DiCE Communication Manager, to co-lead a workshop for patient advocates with Danielle Ripley-Burgess – a very active EOCRC patient advocate working with Fight CRC. Their workshop covered best practices for working with the media. Catie gave an overview of the European media landscape outlining its particularites in relation to EU language diversity and how healthcare legislation defines public and media attitudes towards patient outreach and involvement on the continent.

In a discussion with Dr José Perea, General Surgeon of the Digestive System at the Fundación Jiménez Díaz University Hospital in Madrid, Spain who inspired and co-hosted the Rally on Research Early-Age Onset of Colorectal Cancer (EOCRC), he explained that the global incidence of colorectal cancer among people younger than 50 years old is rising, while the aetiologies (the cause or set of causes) remain unknown. With this, DiCE calls for action on supporting early awareness about the disease as well as research on the biology of EOCRC across diverse populations.

ABOUT THE RALLY ON RESEARCH

The Rally on Research got its start in 2019 as the Early-Age Onset Colorectal Cancer International Symposium, a vision of Dr. José Perea from Madrid, Spain who partnered with Fight Colorectal Cancer, a leading patient-empowerment and advocacy organization in the United States. The first Symposium was hosted in Denver, Colorado, USA, and had more than 45 attendees from four countries. The second Symposium in 2020 went virtual and had over 500 registrants from 17 countries.The 2021 event has been renamed to Rally on Research and will continue to focus on EAO CRC and be hosted online. The Rally on Research is sponsored by No-Shave November and Taiho Oncology. Learn more or contact us for more information.