We’re the UK’s leading charity for Crohn’s and Colitis. Right now, over 500,000 people in the UK are living with a lifelong disease that many people have never heard of. And the real number could be almost double that. Because of the stigma and misunderstanding surrounding these diseases, thousands of people are suffering in silence. But they are not alone. We’re working to improve diagnosis and treatment, and to fund research into a cure; to raise awareness and to give people hope, comfort and confidence to live freer, fuller lives.

As well as providing information and support to people living with Crohn’s and Colitis, for more than 30 years we’ve been leading the drive to increase knowledge of the causes and best treatments for these conditions and have awarded over £11.5 million in grants to date. The researchers we fund are well respected in their field and many have gone on to publish papers, receive further funding, and inform improvements in health care for people with Crohn’s and Colitis thanks to their findings.

More than 70% of people with Crohn’s and Colitis experience pain, and for many of them, pain is a longstanding problem. In a 2016 study of people with these conditions, the abdomen and the back were the most common pain locations within the body.

In 2019, we launched the Pain Collaborative Network, which brings together chronic pain researchers, healthcare professionals, and people living with pain from different disease areas, to share learning and establish new research partnerships to answer key questions in the field.