The Cancer Vanguard was established to pilot and roll out new models of care that would provide innovative high quality cancer care across the whole patient pathway. The Vanguard as a formal collaboration ended at the end of March 2018.

Over the last 18 months, the Cancer Vanguard has been working with external evaluators from Technopolis Group and Optimity Advisors to determine the impact of its work on cancer outcomes and patient experience; the value delivered across all three Vanguard partners; and whether the work can be replicated.

The purpose was not to determine a ‘one size fits all’ model of care but rather to identify opportunities to learn from the work of the Vanguard and spread this learning nationally amongst the other 16 Cancer Alliances.

During the evaluation process, 23 projects were evaluated, 106 stakeholders (including patients living with or beyond cancer) were interviewed and 7 focus groups held to identify the ‘active ingredients’ of the programme that, if replicated elsewhere by other Cancer Alliances, can be expected to give similar results.

The evaluation identified the following key partner-level conditions for success:

  • Strong local leadership for cancer transformation at programme level
  • High-performing teams of project and change managers
  • Openness to collaborate across organisational boundaries
  • Collaborative working with patients and patient representatives
  • A climate of research collaboration
  • A strong network of collaboration with cancer charities

The full Cancer Vanguard Evaluation report, the Executive Summary and an illustration explaining the Cancer Vanguard and the findings of the evaluation are available.