![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/sIIUIQQDbN1PudfJywaNRD0AdaBnmwPUYpsQHYo9nhI7z6hcQkyDx8hyO9zqhWuGPPojugO2M0Y4oG6c6Pt7YxZCB7A0Qv7w68Ha.webp\" "\\"Jeff")
<\/p>\nSome careers are built around a subject. Others eventually ask you to live inside it.<\/p>\n
For decades, Jeff Dunn had worked on cancer from the angles that medicine can sometimes overlook: behavior, quality of life, survivorship, public health, access. Then, a month before he was due to take up the presidency of the Union for International Cancer Control, he was diagnosed with cancer himself.<\/p>\n
The diagnosis did not send his career in a new direction. If anything, it made the questions he had already spent years working on feel more immediate.<\/p>\n
Today, he is Professor of Social and Behavioural Science and Chair of Cancer Survivorship at the University of Southern Queensland, a former President of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), and a longtime figure in prostate cancer research and advocacy. His work has taken him from national guideline development in Australia to international cancer policy, while keeping quality of life and the experience of living with cancer firmly within the conversation.<\/p>\n
Looking back, the path makes sense. At the beginning, however, none of it was planned.<\/p>\n
A Career That Began Somewhere Else<\/p>\n
Oncology was not part of Dunn\u2019s childhood plan. He arrived at university interested in biological science and, at one point, imagined something closer to marine biology. Psychology and sociology eventually pulled him in another direction, leading to a career in the behavioral sciences and, over time, their application to cancer control.<\/p>\n
His work came to span public health, psychosocial oncology, interventions and quality of life. One of the strongest influences on that path was psychiatrist Jimmie Holland, widely regarded as a founder of modern psycho-oncology.<\/p>\n
\u201cShe was a great inspiration to me. She worked at Memorial Sloan Kettering as a psychiatrist deep into her 80s, and I found that inspirational and motivating. I credit Jimmie particularly in this second half of my career with the direction that I took.\u201d<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Jimmie C. Holland, MD, founder of psycho-oncology, pictured in her office in the early 1990s. Photo: Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.<\/p>\n
That direction is still visible in his work at the University of Southern Queensland, where he is Professor of Social and Behavioural Science and Chair of Cancer Survivorship. His research ranges from supportive care and quality of life to public health and early detection.<\/p>\n
One current trial is examining a nurse-led intervention for men receiving androgen deprivation therapy for prostate cancer. At the same time, Dunn recently chaired the development group behind Australia\u2019s updated national guidelines for the early detection of prostate cancer.<\/p>\n
The combination matters because it places two very different moments of the cancer experience in the same frame: finding disease earlier, and helping people live better after diagnosis and treatment.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe university role allows me a breadth of scope to look at a whole range of things. So it\u2019s not all about quality of life and supportive care.\u201d<\/p>\n
That breadth would later become important on a much larger stage.<\/p>\n
Leading UICC While Becoming a Patient Himself<\/p>\n
There was an almost uncomfortable irony to the timing.<\/p>\n
For decades, cancer had been Dunn\u2019s field of work \u2013 something he studied, advocated around and tried to improve at the level of systems and populations. Then, just one month before he was due to take up the presidency of the Union for International Cancer Control, the distance between professional expertise and personal experience collapsed.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs I was about to take up the presidency of the UICC four years ago, I myself was diagnosed with cancer.\u201d<\/p>\n
![\"Jeff](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/Rr29uCHZ_IYqZWWuKhi7KH2soCBL44fW07POAfe5VoqzQiJ1ICnfiUPmt8i113MjjzRacygqGCXinabv8fZWE8FAeL2q0J_IPWe9.webp\" "\\"Jeff")
<\/p>\n
Prof. Jeff Dunn addresses the 2022 World Cancer Congress remotely from Australia. Weeks earlier, he had been diagnosed with mantle cell lymphoma, preventing him from travelling to Geneva as he began his term as UICC President. Photo: Union for International Cancer Control (UICC), World Cancer Congress 2022. UICC<\/p>\n
He was preparing to lead the global peak body for cancer control organizations while beginning to navigate cancer from the other side.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt seemed to me and to many of my friends and colleagues around the world a great irony that literally a month before I was taking up the presidency of the global peak body for cancer control organizations, I myself was diagnosed.\u201d<\/p>\n
The news travelled quickly through the international community he was about to lead. Messages came from friends and colleagues around the world \u2013 some serious, some humorous enough that he chose not to repeat them publicly \u2013 but the response itself stayed with him.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe outpouring of support messages\u2026 and the outpouring of support from all around the world was really quite moving and motivating. Anyway, and as you can see, I\u2019m in remission. It\u2019s not over yet, but I\u2019m in remission and doing well.\u201d<\/p>\n
He stepped into the presidency carrying that diagnosis with him. And the organization he was taking over was itself emerging from a bruising period.<\/p>\n
COVID-19 had stripped away many of the things that normally held an international network together. Conferences had been cancelled. Travel had stopped. Scholarships and training opportunities had been interrupted. Community cancer organizations that depended on philanthropy and fundraising had seen those lifelines shrink. Even the World Cancer Congress and World Cancer Leaders Summit \u2013 two of UICC\u2019s major convening moments \u2013 had been lost to the pandemic.<\/p>\n
After years of cancelled meetings and interrupted travel, UICC\u2019s members needed opportunities to meet again, exchange experience and rebuild the relationships that had been difficult to sustain through the pandemic.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur focus coming out of COVID was very much about consolidation, getting back to our membership, reconnecting, looking for ways that we could support members, rebuild, reconnect, pursue their mission, perhaps in different ways.\u201d<\/p>\n
For an organization with more than a thousand members across the world, those opportunities to gather carried real weight. They were where cancer organizations compared experience, learned from one another and rebuilt the relationships that made collaboration possible.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur real priorities were to reconnect, to rebuild, to re-energize and to support our membership.\u201d<\/p>\n
The World Cancer Congress returned. Member organizations began meeting again. Training, capacity building and international collaboration resumed. And even while UICC was rebuilding those connections, the work that could not wait continued \u2013 including efforts to improve access to cancer medicines through the Access to Oncology Medicines Coalition (ATOM).<\/p>\n
\u201cWe were also very much involved in ATOM, our Access to Oncology Medicines Coalition, making sure that we got medicines, affordable medicines, to all countries around the world, not just those that could afford it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those years placed Dunn in an unusual position. He was leading an organization devoted to reducing the global burden of cancer while still living with the consequences of his own diagnosis. At the same time, UICC was trying to restore the relationships and programs that had been fractured by the pandemic.<\/p>\n