2024 Winner
Molly Cuddihy and Sara Millar
Pair who forged a powerful friendship as girls while being treated for cancer, and together raised £300,000 to support child patients
Molly and Sara use their own experiences to raise money and lobby for better services for younger patients. They met while undergoing life-saving cancer treatment in 2017. Molly, now 21, and Sara, 20, started chatting in a special teenage common room at the Royal Hospital for Children in Glasgow. Molly had spent a year at the hospital being treated for metastatic Ewing Sarcoma, a rare form of bone cancer, and Sara was suffering from Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. When they saw a 12-year-old boy being asked to leave the space because he wasn’t a teenager they realised that patients in his age group needed somewhere to call their own.
They launched the Every Thank You Counts campaign and raised £300,000 to create a new recovery and social room, furnished with comfy chairs, a pool table, TVs, games consoles, a dining table and a fridge stocked with treats. The fund also paid for special reclining chairs and a ward blood analyser, which means quicker on-site blood testing for children, reducing anxious waits and time spent in hospital. Their next project will focus on the paediatric intensive care unit.
Jamie Redfern, director of women’s and children’s services at NHS Greater Glasgow & Clyde, said: “The work Molly and Sara continue to do is of huge value to all the patients, their relatives or carers and our staff. They will always have a special place at the RHC.”