We’re excited to announce that World Cancer Research Fund has joined Our Future Health, the UK’s largest health research programme, as an affiliate partner.

With cancer rates rising and modifiable factors contributing to around 40% of all cases, the partnership represents a bold step in harnessing large-scale health data and decades of scientific insight to prevent more cancers before they start.

The UK Director at World Cancer Research Fund, Steven Greenberg, said:

“It’s tremendously exciting to be a part of the UK’s largest, most diverse health research programme. We know that 40% of cancers can be prevented through modifiable factors such as diet and exercise. With a growing rate of diagnoses, collaboration to better understand these risks is more important and timelier than ever.

“By working together, we’ll be able to combine our own extensive knowledge and experience on cancer prevention with the knowledge and insight coming from Our Future Health to further understand how cancer risk can be affected by diet and lifestyle.

As an affiliate partner, we’ll contribute our global expertise in the links between diet, weight, physical activity and cancer risk, helping guide Our Future Health’s work in identifying preventable risk factors. In turn, we’ll benefit from collaborating with the UK’s largest health research programme – enabling new insights into early detection and public health strategies.”

About Our Future Health

Our Future Health is the UK’s largest ever health research programme. It is designed to help people live healthier lives for longer through the discovery and testing of more effective approaches to prevention, earlier detection and treatment of diseases. Our Future Health is inviting millions of people, from all backgrounds and from across the UK, to take part. Volunteers are providing information about their health and lifestyles to create an incredibly detailed picture that represents the whole of the UK.

Dr Raghib Ali, CEO and Chief Medical Officer of Our Future Health, said:

“We’re so pleased to welcome World Cancer Research Fund as our newest affiliate charity partner. We know that cancer will affect half of us in our lifetimes, and together we want to improve cancer prevention, so more people can live longer, healthier lives. Their expertise in funding life-saving research will be really valuable for Our Future Health.”

> About us

> Our partnerships

Alcohol and cancer: let’s talk – that was the theme of this year’s Cancer Prevention Action Week. For 7 days on 23–29 June, we talked to politicians, gave radio interviews and spoke to experts about alcohol and cancer. Plus, we shared news and views across our socials:

Facebook | LinkedIn | Instagram | Bluesky

How Cancer Prevention Action Week unfolded

Monday’s highlights

> Brits find it harder to talk about alcohol than sex or money

> Our campaign video launches

Yorkshire GP speaks out in support of CPAW:

Dr Nigel Wells, Medical Director and Executive Director Clinical & Care Professional Humber and North Yorkshire ICB and practising GP:

As a GP, I know people can be reluctant to talk about alcohol or share concerns about their drinking – so it doesn’t surprise me that only 2 in 10 people across Yorkshire and the Humber feel comfortable doing so.

But alcohol isn’t harmless – it increases the risk of 7 types of cancer, and, too often, people simply aren’t aware. If this campaign helps someone pause and ask whether alcohol might be affecting their health, and encourages them to speak to a healthcare professional, it will have made a real difference. We need to make these conversations as routine as those about smoking or diet – and that starts with creating a safe, non-judgemental space in every consultation.

We tabled an Early Day Motion in support of Cancer Prevention Action Week. And Alcohol Focus Scotland, a key supporter of this year’s campaign, tabled a motion in the Scottish Parliament on alcohol and cancer.

Tuesday’s highlights

Alcohol Focus Scotland organised a photo call at Holyrood with Members of the Scottish Parliament (MSPs). Photographed are 11 MSPs, including the Cabinet Secretary for Health Neil Gray; Jackie Baillie, Labour’s deputy leader and health spokesperson, and Presiding officer Alison Johnstone. Read more on LinkedIn

Sheridan Dixon, of South Tyneside, was interviewed on ITV Tyne Tees about how she has reduced her drinking as part of efforts to stay cancer free. We’re grateful to our partner Balance North East for helping us share Sheridan’s story.

Wednesday’s highlights

We headed to No 10 Downing St to present our petition to UK Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer.

Prof Lord John Krebs, Chair of our Global Cancer Update Programme, tabled questions in the Lords on the links between alcohol and cancer, keeping the issue high on the political agenda:

Research funded by World Cancer Research Fund has shown that people living with cancer who closely follow a sustainable and nutritious diet – the EAT-Lancet reference diet – have a lower risk of dying from cancer and from all causes.

This is the first study to look at the impact of the EAT-Lancet diet on people living with or beyond cancer – as opposed to the general population. Prof Sabine Rohrmann and her team at the University of Zurich, in collaboration with colleagues from another Swiss university, the UK and Austria, used UK Biobank data to see if closely following this diet – with its emphasis on eating a rich variety of plant foods – affected the risk of death for people with a cancer diagnosis at the time they were recruited for the study.

Studying more than 25,000 people with an average age of 60 years at recruitment, the researchers used dietary information collected in the UK Biobank to develop a score that reflected how closely participants followed the EAT-Lancet diet.

More support needed for people facing cancer

Of the 25,348 cancer survivors in the group studied, 4,781 people died during the study follow-up. Prof Rohrmann’s results showed modest links between closely following the diet and a lower risk of dying from cancer, and of dying from all causes. The researchers didn’t observe a link between the diet and dying from heart disease.

Almost 64% of the participants were female, and participants who followed the EAT-Lancet diet more closely were more likely to be female. However, this study confirmed previous evidence showing that people living with and beyond cancer do not tend to follow healthy diets after their diagnosis. This emphasises the need to help people form healthier habits and overcome the barriers to eating well, such as treatment side-effects affecting appetite and taste.

These findings highlight the importance of greater nutrition support and guidance for people facing cancer. Guidelines aimed at the general population are unlikely to consider the needs of people living with and beyond cancer. With a lack of evidence-based recommendations for this population, the gap can sometimes be filled by practices not supported by the science – such as excessive use of dietary supplements.

This evidence showing the benefits of the EAT-Lancet diet follows recent research by our Global Cancer Update Programme, which provided guidance for people with a breast or a bowel cancer diagnosis.

Researchers funded by World Cancer Research Fund have discovered that brisk walking is linked to a lower risk of 5 cancers:

• anal
• liver (hepatocellular carcinoma)
• small intestine
• thyroid
• lung

Using information stored in the UK Biobank – a large database of many different aspects of health – scientists explored the link between walking pace – slow, steady or brisk – and the risk of developing 28 types of cancer.

They confirmed that the link between brisk walking and a reduced risk of developing the 5 cancers was true, even after accounting for overall physical activity and total walking time.

Speeding up your walk could represent an easy, low-cost public health intervention to decrease cancer risk.

The paper, published in BMC Cancer, says:

“Adopting a brisk walking pace may represent a pragmatic target for public health interventions to decrease cancer risk, particularly in circumstances where increases in walking volume or frequency prove impractical.”

PhD student Michael Stein’s research was supported by funding from Prof Michael Leitzmann’s grant. This research was funded by World Cancer Research Fund as part of the WCRF International Regular Grant Programme.

> Read the full paper: Usual walking Pace and risk of 28 cancers– results from the UK biobank

> More on this grant

Eating a wide variety of food may reduce the risk of gastrointestinal cancers, according to research funded by the World Cancer Research Fund network* and published in the European Journal of Cancer.

Little is known about how eating a wide variety of food species, also known as food biodiversity, may benefit our health or affect our cancer risk. Food species refer to a distinct type of plant or animal, such as wheat, chicken, or salmon. For example, salmon, mackerel, and tuna are all separate food species, even though they share some biological traits and belong to the same food group. Similarly, rocket, lettuce and spinach count as separate food species, even though they are all leafy green vegetables. However, chicken and a chicken’s egg belong to the same food species even though they are different types of food.

This study is the first to examine how the number of different food types consumed, measured as Dietary Species Richness (the number of species an individual consumes per year) affects the risk of the following gastrointestinal cancers:

• Oesophagus
• Throat
• Stomach
• Bowel
• Colon
• Rectum
• Gallbladder
• Pancreas
• Liver

The study followed 450,111 cancer-free adults in 9 European countries from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition cohort for 14 years. The researchers, from the International Agency for Research on Cancer, found that individuals with the most diverse diets, by including more food species in their diet, had a 23% lower risk of developing gastrointestinal cancers compared with those with the least variety. The risk decreased by 6% for every 10 extra species per year added to their diet. People can do this by including more variety in the types of fruit and vegetables they eat, for example, choosing to eat local and seasonal fruit and vegetables of different colours.

Food biodiversity includes eating different types of food that provide the necessary nutrients for maintaining health. Investigating food biodiversity is important because it has the potential to benefit public health and sustainable food systems.

Dr Helen Croker, our Assistant Director of Research and Policy, said: “Diets have become more limited in the types of foods eaten and they are often high in fat, sugar and salt. However, for cancer prevention, it’s important to eat a healthy, balanced and varied diet with plenty of wholegrains, pulses, vegetables and fruit.”

This study was funded by Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds based in the Netherlands, as part of the World Cancer Research Fund International network.

Another study from this grant looked at how food biodiversity is measured. Methods such as Hill numbers estimate the number of species, but it wasn’t clear whether these numbers could be compared across different study settings.

The findings showed that Dietary Species Richness is the most feasible way to measure and evaluate food biodiversity across various contexts, and considering high-, middle- and low-income countries. Regardless of which Hill number was used, however, all measures indicated that greater food biodiversity was associated with better micronutrient sufficiency and with lower rates of all-cause mortality, this latter association yet being strongest for Dietary Species Richness.

Achieving a balanced combination of exercise and controlling our waistline is far more effective in reducing our risk of cancer than doing just one or the other, according to a study funded by World Cancer Research Fund.

In the world’s first study looking at the effectiveness of combining these measures, we found that only doing one is not enough to lower our risk of cancer. The study, which looked at more than 300,000 people, found that:

• People not meeting World Health Organization (WHO) guidelines on waist circumference are at 11% greater risk, even if they are physically active.
• People not meeting WHO guidelines for physical exercise are at 4% greater risk, even if “abdominally lean” (ie they have a smaller waist).
• Achieving neither means a 15% greater risk.

The study – WHO guidelines on waist circumference and physical activity and their joint association with cancer risk (Lead researcher: Prof Michael Leitzmann, University of Regensburg) – was published in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.