Resources for cervical cancer elimination, including new UICC course on the Elimination Planning Tool

In May at the Cancer Planners’ Forum, as part of its role in the International Cancer Control Partnership (ICCP), UICC launched a new global interactive map of national cervical cancer elimination strategies, alongside a new compilation of more than 250 resources.

This section of the ICCP portal dedicated to cervical cancer elimination gathers the various tools and materials available to support the cancer community to achieving the WHO 90:70:90 2030 targets and set countries on a path to elimination cervical cancer as a public health problem. This work hosted on the ICCP portal was led by the International Gynaecological Cancer Society, with the support of the Cancer Elimination Collaboration (CEC) at the University of Sydney, led by Prof. Karen Canfell. 

A key resource for countries, the Cervical Cancer Elimination Planning Tool (EPT), features in this compilation. The EPT was developed by the CEC at the University of Sydney in partnership with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) and is available on IARC’s Global Cancer Observatory. 

To facilitate its use, UICC has recently released a new online course, developed in partnership with the CEC. The course is designed to provide policy makers, cancer planners, advocates with the opportunity to explore key questions as to how to develop effective, sustainable and context-specific cervical cancer strategies. The course will enable participants to:

• understand the need for comprehensive evidence-based planning for elimination programmes and to inform decision making by policymakers and advocates;
• understand the practical workings of the Elimination Planning Tool (EPT) and be able to use the tool effectively;
• understand the role of the EPT within existing implementation programmes and future implementation work;
• understand the current use of the EPT to address various and localised policy questions considering a number of different country case studies;
• understand how the EPT complements other resources for elimination planning;
• have an overview of future developments and plans for the EPT and how these complement global scale-up of the three pillars.

The course includes real-life use cases from different countries to bring to life the types of questions countries are considering in developing cervical cancer strategies, such as: 

• What is the optimal catch-up age range and service delivery strategy for implementing a multi-age cohort HPV vaccination campaign?
• How do vaccine outcomes differ by state, and what would be the impact of adjusting vaccine delivery models? 

“We are so grateful for UICC’s support of this important Community of Practice, to facilitate country-led planning for cervical cancer elimination. Involving advocates, planners and policy-makers in planning for elimination is a crucial process in terms of setting sustainable elimination goals and implementation plans. This Community of Practice will enable sharing of experiences across countries - a collaborative platform to help all in the international community to realise elimination.”
– Prof. Karen Canfell, Lead, Cancer Elimination Collaboration (CEC), University of Sydney 

Via UICC Connect, UICC will be supporting discussions on the EPT, enabling exchange and dialogue with key experts and other users, as well as other key topics that are central to elimination via a cervical cancer community of practice.

To engage and join these discussions, please reach out to gloor@uicc.org for more information.