The Mission’s Impact: 2021-22

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Download the Impact Report (PDF) HERE

Since the inception of the TJBCM four and a half years ago, we have sought to convene the broad landscape of brain tumour treatment, research and advocacy to deliver transformational programmes. The last 12 months have been the Mission’s most productive and impactful to date and we have incorporated as a Community Interest Company, enabling the Mission to work to the highest possible standards.

An additional 3,200 patients a year will receive treatment and care in a “Tessa Jowell Centre of Excellence”, following the designation of eight more Centres this year. We acknowledge in particular the six centres that obtained designation following a reapplication, that required them to make impressive changes to their services in response to the committee’s feedback in 2020. We are proud to say that there are now 17 Tessa Jowell Centres of Excellence in the UK. We are so grateful to the designation committee who invested so much time and energy in making this all possible.

In addition to the Tessa Jowell Centre of Excellence we have established the Tessa Jowell Academy: a free digital platform to facilitate sharing of excellence and provide more learning and development opportunities. The platform is filled with community-led content and has 700+ active users – more than double than anticipated. In addition, we are recruiting a fully funded neuro-oncology fellow as part of our training programme.

Following the success of the Tessa Jowell Centres of Excellence Programme for Adults, we have launched the Tessa Jowell Centre of Excellence for Children with brain tumours. The committee overseeing this initiative has made substantial progress with standard setting and designing the application process, tailoring the adult process to the unique challenges seen in children.

Upon feedback from our Strategy Board, we have stepped up our efforts in research. With pilot funding from Brain Tumour Research, we have launched a new accelerator programme to translate novel therapeutics from the lab into human trials. We are currently assembling a committee to oversee this work. The Mission also supports two precision medicine initiatives, and we are pleased that both the Tessa Jowell Brain Matrix and the Minderoo Precision Medicine Programme have shown steady patient recruitment.

Finally, we thank our nine generous funders who have supported the Mission and provided leadership so that together we can best serve the brain tumour community. This work could not have been done without the 80+ members of the TJBCM, who volunteer their time and expertise to design and deliver our  programmes. We hope that this report gives you some insight into what can be achieved with a small team of three full-time employees and a fantastic brain
tumour community at a total cost of £230k.

Dr Nicky Huskens (CEO, TJBCM) & Professor Richard Gilbertson (Chair, TJBCM)