How brave bowel cancer survivor Julie is helping to move research forwards

Following successful treatment for stage three bowel cancer 10 years ago, Julie Hepburn, a member of the Health and Care Research Wales Public Involvement community, told how she is continuing to keep herself busy with public involvement work to help advance research into the condition.

Julie, who is also a Lead Lay Research Partner at the Wales Cancer Research Centre, shared her journey in patient and public involvement which she said gives her a ‘great deal’ of satisfaction.

Julie said she enjoys doing public involvement work in research for many reasons. Speaking at the Wales Cancer Research Centre Conference, she said: “I wanted to improve things for people who have bowel cancer and other cancers. I had just retired when I went down with bowel cancer, so I decided I wanted to do something useful with my retirement.

“As soon as I finished treatment, I found out more about public involvement. I'm interested in medical science and I thought this would be something really interesting to get involved with.

“I've done all sorts of work with researchers like looking at lay summaries, helping them with their proposals, talking at events and conferences.

“I get a lot of satisfaction from helping on all the research and making it relevant to the patients. I meet a lot of interesting people and I really feel I'm contributing to moving research forward. I'll carry on doing it as long as I can.”

Watch Julie’s video and learn more about her public involvement journey.