Lesley Fallowfield, is head of the Cancer Research UK Psychosocial Oncology Group at Brighton & Sussex Medical School. She is one of a small number of international figures who have established psycho-oncology as an important discipline. Her principal research contributions have been the development and validation of instruments to measure the quality of life in clinical treatment trials, and interventions to improve the ways in which health professionals communicate with cancer patients. Two systematic reviews of her novel communication skills programme for oncologists showed this educational model to be the only level 1A evidence to date demonstrating that skills could be taught, transferred into the clinic and maintained. A modular educational initiative that she has developed which improves communication specifically about clinical trial recruitment has been adopted by the National Cancer Networks of Scotland, England and Wales and internationally by Canada.