LATEST NEWS: 24 July 2025

The inaugural World Radiotherapy Awareness Day will be celebrated on 7 September 2025, to bring all professionals working in the field together to highlight the importance of radiation therapy in cancer care.

We asked Prof Sandra Turner, Co-Chair of the founding WRAD Committee and a Radiation Oncologist at Westmead Hospital, Sydney, to tell us a more about this exciting initiative.

1. Can you tell us about the genesis of WRAD and how you got involved?

As we all know, radiotherapy is an effective and vital cancer treatment, understood and underused globally (including in Australia and New Zealand). We’ve known about this problem for a long time and many advocacy efforts take place worldwide, but sadly the problem persists.

It struck me that having a World Day for radiotherapy might help amplify these efforts to raise awareness of radiotherapy. My colleague, A/Prof Lucinda Morris and I, both of us past chairs of the Targeting Cancer campaign, met with radiotherapy advocacy enthusiasts at ESTRO (European Society for Radiotherapy and Oncology) in early 2024 to pitch the idea. We gathered a small international team who were passionate about the idea. It grew from there!

2. Why is there a need to raise awareness about radiation therapy on a global scale?

Lack of access to radiotherapy is a global health crisis. There are dozens of countries in Africa and Asia where there’s literally no radiotherapy. Even where services exist, inadequate resources including huge gaps in the radiation oncology professional staff needed to deliver treatment safely mean people miss out. Partly this is due to underinvestment in radiotherapy by governments compared to other cancer treatments. Even in wealthy countries, poor understanding and geographic access lead to many not getting radiotherapy when they should. The result: millions of people globally die and suffer unnecessarily. As the cancer rates increase globally, the problem will only get worse.

3. The theme for WRAD is “One Voice for Radiotherapy”. What is the aim of the event?

WRAD aims to focus advocacy efforts intensively around a World Day. We believe this will amplify the work already being done throughout the radiotherapy community. We want to inspire people to get involved and provide a platform and resources (worldradiotherapy.org) to support individuals and organisations to become more active. Our community needs to work together to raise awareness of radiotherapy as a vital and underutilised treatment. Hence: One Voice for Radiotherapy.

4. What can radiation therapists, radiation oncologists, physicists, patients and others working in the field do to mark/celebrate WRAD on 7 September? What sorts of events do you envision happening on the day?

We chose September 7 as it was the day that the first patient was treated on a linear accelerator. Activity will take place during the week leading up to 7 September (Sunday in 2025).

We have nearly 50 radiation oncology organisations, patient groups and industry partners on board with the campaign. Many are already developing media plans and events, ranging from a morning tea to international conference sessions.

We encourage you to:

1. Sign up for updates via worldradiotherapy.org
2. Visit the website to access posters, email signatures, slide decks, social media templates, Teams backgrounds etc
3. Share the word with your colleagues and organisations – send your logos to become official supporters and link to our website from yours (WRAD will link back)
4. Link to our socials and share/like posts (Facebook, X, LinkedIn, Instagram)  and create your own posts.
5. Develop an event for your department, workplace and/or organisation – ideas can be found in the Tool Kit on the WRAD website (coming soon). Please let us know what you are doing (large or small, everything counts). Take a photo – we’d like to list your event on the website.

5. What do you hope WRAD will look like in five years’ time?

This year has been all about ensuring the global radiotherapy community are on board with WRAD and making the campaign as inclusive and far-reaching as possible. Next year will be about expanding that community including providing translations of material to better support non-English speaking parts of the world. We also want to increase the patient/consumer buy-in – individuals and organisations. We know the power of the consumer voice.

In five years’ time, we hope that WRAD will have the visibility of events such as the UICC World Cancer Day campaign, and will become a standard day on the cancer calendar. We know that world days are only effective if they serve to maintain momentum consistently towards positive change. WRAD won’t ‘fix’ the complex and entrenched problem in our field. Keeping pressure on decision-makers and constantly working to address barriers to people getting radiotherapy (including through research) will remain critical. Maybe ask me again in five years!

Founding WRAD committee:

Sandra Turner (co-chair) Aus
Katie Wakeham (co-chair) UK
Darien Laird Switzerland
Lucinda Morris Aus
Michelle Leech Republic of Ireland
Sarah Quinlan UK Jeff White USA

Find out more about WRAD