Schedule 2022

In this opening plenary for the theme area of cancer treatment and palliative care, we will take a global look at how after ASCO’s 2012 call for palliative care’s integration into standard oncology care. How much progress has been made?  After over 50 years of palliative care development worldwide, there are still numerous barriers to its implementation and integration into health care systems including oncology practice. We will explore the benefits and barriers to integration with leaders from the two major oncology societies. We will also hear from experts in pediatric oncology and consider the challenges faced by oncology providers in low- and middle-income countries.

This session will focus on Indigenous data in cancer control, Indigenous ways of knowing, and effective engagement with Indigenous partners. The context is to support the development of meaningful and relevant data and qualitative stories that can be used to tell a story of progress on implementing a national cancer plan. Canada will share lessons learned from co-developing quantitative and qualitative progress indicators and building relationships with First Nations, Inuit, and Métis partners. NZ will talk about Mātauranga Māori (Māori knowledge systems) and processes to engage Māori leaders, including through working with a Māori cancer leadership network and hosting a series of hui (meetings) for nearly 3000 Māori whānau which aimed to help to design cancer services to better meet the needs of Māori community. Cancer Australia will share examples of targeted strategies and programs, such as culturally specific website and resources, support for clinical trials, and priority driven research schemes specifically aimed for and developed with Indigenous Australians. This symposium addresses target across the World Cancer Declaration, with a particular focus on Target 2; developing meaningful cancer data for Indigenous populations and tracking progress on cancer plans will help support improved cancer outcomes.  The session will share broader lessons from effective indigenous partner engagement that can be applied to engaging underserved and marginalized populations in other countries and reporting on gaps and progress for those populations.

COVID-19 has revealed how vulnerable the health care sector is to change and its need for structural and technological transformation. Across the spectrum of health care delivery, product supply chains, health information systems, R&D, policy, financing… not one area of the health care system was untouched by disruption. In turn, this has created opportunities to reimagine the traditional paradigms of health and open possibilities for new models that can better serve patients and society in the future.

Drawing on recent research and insights on the future of health and cancer care, this session will highlight key forces driving transformation in health care and we will discuss how these forces will impact health system models and redefine the roles of today’s traditional health and cancer care actors in the near-term. 

Quitting smoking at the time of a cancer diagnosis improves people’s survival by more than 40 percent. However, few countries have prioritized the systematic integration of evidence-based tobacco cessation support into cancer care. This session describes national initiatives from Canada and the United States to implement, scale-up, and spread tobacco cessation interventions in cancer care settings, as well as activities in Europe to increase the capacity of health professionals to deliver tobacco cessation treatment to their patients with cancer.

Cervical and lung cancer disproportionately affect Indigenous and materially deprived populations. Increasing access to and participation in lung and cervical screening is urgently required to reduce these inequities in incidence. This session will present examples of community-specific work to engage Indigenous and underserved populations to develop collaborative, culturally safe and community relevant approaches to increase uptake of lung and cervical cancer screening. Presenters will provide examples of current work, discuss strategies for engagement and collaboration and provide an overview of innovative tools and approaches to promote equitable access to cancer screening.

In order to achieve the ambition of the Global Strategy for cervical cancer elimination and deliver comprehensive cervical cancer prevention and control programmes, the mobilisation of sufficient financial resources is a critical success factor. More than 85% of the burden of cervical cancer is in low-and-middle income countries, and an estimated USD 10.5 billion is required to meet the 90:70:90 targets in 78 of the highest burden countries.

This session will explore the overall investment case for cervical cancer programmes, how countries’ health financing systems present both challenges and opportunities for increasing equity and access to cervical cancer services for women and girls, and illustrate practical tools to support the costing of cervical cancer country programmes. Understanding resource mobilisation, funding flows and investment case development across countries can provide policy and advocacy tools for increasing the funding available for cervical cancer elimination. The session draws on experiences of the Unitaid-funded SUCCESS project, Scale Up Cervical Cancer Elimination through Secondary prevention Strategy’, led by Expertise France and implemented in partnership with Jhpiego.

Evidence suggests that advocacy insights and input have significant implications for patient outcomes. As such, there is a need to recognize and accept advocates and advocacy organizations as credible contributors in cancer care, which will be presented in this session. While advocates and advocacy organizations strive to provide beneficial programs and resources for cancer patients, they frequently struggle with the challenges of how to record their progress and successes. Building relationships with academic researchers can assist with these efforts. Academic and advocacy partnerships can provide an avenue to perform research in a way that benefits and respects both partners and participants and build a bridge between research projects and services provision.

Often, researchers are viewed as less concerned with community needs than their own research rewards. As such, collaborations between advocacy organizations and researchers can help ensure that research-led interventions directly address community concerns, are culturally relevant and appropriate, and ultimately build trust in research among community members.

The WHO Essential Medicines List includes priority cancer medicines deemed essential for health systems. Yet studies have shown that many of these essential drugs are not widely available in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The reasons for this gap - between essential and yet inaccessible - are varied and complex, but can be affected by concerted, global attention. In fact, a number of organizations are developing or have developed strategies for addressing many of these challenges. This session will presents an opportunity for greater understanding of what is being done, and greater momentum towards seeing these strategies implemented in a focused and integrated way.

The 54 countries of The Commonwealth carry some of the highest cervical cancer rates globally, but also some of the lowest rates. This disparity in cervical cancer outcomes is largely driven by inequity in access to information and services for what is a preventable cancer, as well as a high HIV burden in some commonwealth countries and a lack of well-equipped diagnostic and treatment facilities necessary for comprehensive cancer services.

The COVID 19 pandemic has severely interrupted cervical cancer services such as HPV vaccination and screening across Commonwealth countries. However, it is important to note that systems innovations have been introduced either during the pandemic across countries or prior to the pandemic and can be leveraged to support accelerated action on cervical cancer to achieve the targets of the cervical cancer elimination strategy.

This session does not lay out the problem of cervical cancer, as this is well known. Rather, the session looks at how Commonwealth countries can move forward with their cervical cancer elimination efforts building on some of these systems and policy innovations- such as an integrated information system to track cervical cancer screening, using virtual reality to improve surgery capacity, and developing a voluntary information and price sharing database for commonwealth countries which includes HPV vaccines. Finally, there will be a policy perspective from a former Minister of Health and cervical cancer advocate around key considerations in moving from small pilot projects to national implementation. Each speaker will present the key elements of the session in a more ‘ted talk’ style presentation (with minimal use of slides).

The topics addressed in the session relate to targets 1, 4 and 6 of the World Cancer Declaration and offer feasible, and implementable practices that can be undertaken in other countries.

Cancer services are, by their nature, complex and for those affected by cancer, often frightening. Most cancer treatment services, at least nominally, aim to provide care that is person centred and fully meets the needs of those affected by cancer and their families. However, despite strong rhetoric on this, often services are instead centred around provider needs, focused within secondary or tertiary settings, and fail to meet the needs of underserved minority populations including Indigenous populations. This session explores how national or regional organisations can genuinely engage with patients and families to reorient services, identify and amplify their priorities, and design cancer treatment services that support both patients and those that deliver care to them to achieve optimal outcomes.

This symposium addresses two targets within the World Cancer Declaration; Target 1: strengthening health systems for effective cancer control and Target 7: Improving access across the cancer care continuum.