One Voice for Radiotherapy: Creating World Radiotherapy Awareness Day

23 July 2025

One Voice for Radiotherapy: Creating World Radiotherapy Awareness Day

We all know that radiotherapy (or radiation therapy) is vital for curing cancer, alleviating symptoms, and improving quality of life. Access to radiotherapy is directly linked to improved survival for many cancers. Radiotherapy is also a highly cost-effective cancer treatment. However, around the world significant regional and national disparities persist. Reasons include inadequate services, geographical barriers, insufficient workforce and lack of awareness of modern radiotherapy amongst patients, the general community, healthcare professionals and policymakers. The purpose of creating a radiotherapy awareness day is to provide a platform and opportunity for the global radiotherapy community to join in focusing the attention of the general public, media and government on the vital importance of radiotherapy.

The theme for WRAD for the next three years is “One Voice for Radiotherapy”. WRAD will launch on 7th September 2025, the date the first patient was treated on a linear accelerator.

Reaching this Point

The WRAD initiative was first introduced during London Global Cancer Week in November 2024 and has since gained widespread support. A global planning meeting in March 2025 drew over 800 participants from around the world, including representatives from major radiotherapy societies including ALATRO, AORTIC, ASTRO, CACA, ESTRO, FARO, MESTRO, PROS, RCR and SIOP, as well as patient advocates and industry sponsors. The planning events were both in-person and virtual, running over two time periods to enhance global accessibility. We had over 800 registrants at the two meetings from all parts of the globe, a testament to the enthusiasm for the WRAD initiative. All major professional radiotherapy societies have been approached to understand their goals for joining the WRAD movement and how they’ll get involved. We’ve also secured significant sponsorship from industry supporters, but of course we need more to ensure WRAD’s sustainability!

Moving Forward

The next steps will include building the WRAD website, social media channels and providing resources and inspiration for others to get involved. We’re planning events and promotion of WRAD at major radiotherapy conferences. We ask all readers to please sign up to this important initiative via the link or QR code in this article to receive updates. We hope you and your teams will get involved to make the first (and subsequent) WRADs an overwhelming

success. Please talk about WRAD, share with your colleagues and think about what you/your group will do to mark the launch of WRAD on the week starting September 7th.

We believe that WRAD’s global reach and inclusive approach position it as a unifying movement to champion the lifesaving and life-improving potential of radiotherapy.

Please join us! Together, let’s raise One Voice for Radiotherapy.

Acknowledgement

The WRAD Committee:

Sandra Turner - Co-Chair, Radiation Oncologist, Australia

Katie Wakeham - Co-chair, Clinical Oncologist, UK

Darien Laird - Executive Director Global Coalition for Radiotherapy, Switzerland

Lucinda Morris - Radiation Oncologist, Australia

Michelle Leech - Radiation Therapist, Ireland

Sarah Quinlan - Charity Director Radiotherapy UK, UK

Contact

Email: contact@worldradiotherapy.org

Website: www.worldradiotherapy.org

Social Media: X LinkedIn YouTube Facebook

Use the hashtags: #WorldRTDay #WRAD #OneVoiceForRadiotherapy

World Radiotherapy
Awareness Day Website

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