Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre is looking for people who have been affected by cancer to play an important role in advancing the search for cancer cures by partnering with cancer researchers as community representatives. Community representatives don’t need a science background – what Peter Mac’s researchers are looking for is to learn from your experiences of cancer and cancer treatment.
Peter Mac’s community representatives are people who have experienced cancer, or their family, friends and carers. As a volunteer community representative, you will be matched with a researcher working on a type of cancer you care about. Every community representative role is unique, but the type of activities you might be asked to undertake include:
- Talking to a researcher about what happened during treatment, and what it felt like, so they can better understand the human impacts of their work
- Talking to a researcher about the things that are important to people impacted by your type of cancer, so the researcher can make more informed decisions
- Helping a researcher to explain their work in a way that is easy to understand
- Asking researchers about how they make decisions about investing research dollars
- Helping a researcher plan ways to communicate their research to people who are impacted by your type of cancer.
Generally, community representative roles require a commitment of one face-to-face meeting at Peter Mac every 3 to 6 months.
Right now, Peter Mac has volunteer community representative positions available in a range of cancers, including blood, lung, breast, prostate, bladder, kidney, liver and others. Positions will also soon become available in a range of other cancers.
If you would like to find out more about becoming a Peter Mac community representative, please email your name, phone number and the cancer types you’re interested in to Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre’s Research Consumer Engagement Coordinator, Anna Jones, at anna.jones@petermac.org.