UICC announces the winners of Best CEO and Best World Cancer Day Campaign Awards

Best CEO Award - Three winners illustrate great leadership

UICC’s Best CEO Award acknowledges an outstanding individual from across UICC’s membership who has demonstrated exemplary leadership in managing a cancer control organisation. The award is not meant to reflect career achievements but rather those of the past two years. 

The following three CEOs of UICC member organisations were selected as the finalists: Hana Chaar Choueib, General Manager, Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon (CCCL); Diana Sarfati, Chief Executive Officer, Te Aho o Te Kahu, Cancer Control Agency, New Zealand; Murallitharan Munisamy, Managing Director, National Cancer Society Malaysia (NCSM).

In considering this year’s award in the context of its theme, leadership through crisis, the judges faced a challenging task in selecting one winner among the three finalists. It was felt that each one of them provided a very different, but equally remarkable, example of a leader’s response to crisis situations; together, the three different stories illustrate what great leadership can achieve in times of crisis:

• Diana Sarfati is the leader of a public agency who managed to unite all communities behind a common vision, even when COVID-19 appeared to derail her efforts.
• Murallitharan Munisamy is a civil society leader who safeguarded the frontline services of his organisation, while also playing a crucial role in his country’s COVID-19 response.
• Hana Chaar Choueib steered her organisation in Lebanon through several crises – not only COVID-19 but also political upheaval and ongoing economic challenges – to ensure the continuity of care and psychosocial support for children with cancer in her country.

To highlight the diversity of leadership approaches that have seen the cancer community through the last two very challenging years, the judges have therefore decided that the 2022 CEO Award should be presented to all three finalists. An exceptional decision, in recognition of an exceptional period in time. 

Best World Cancer Day Campaign Award

The Best World Cancer Day Campaign Award celebrates excellence in cancer advocacy by recognising a particularly strong campaign for 4 February aligned with the theme to improve equity in cancer care.

The winning submission was for the campaign run by Spanish Association Against Cancer. The main objective of their World Cancer Day 2022 campaign was to “generate noise, indignation and activism” around the inequities that exist in cancer care, of which many are not aware. Messages were tailored to reach different audiences: politicians, public figures, influencers, doctors, psychologists, people living with cancer and the general public. All were urged to sign a petition to fight to reduce inequity in cancer care.

The Association also made use of location intelligence technology to reach people via mobile advertising at four spots on Gran Vía in Madrid. The supporting campaign event was attended notably by Queen Letizia of Spain and the Minister of Health. More than 70,000 people signed the petition.

The three other finalists, selected among the many excellent submissions received by UICC, were the Children’s Cancer Center of Lebanon (CCCL), the Shaukat Khanum Memorial Cancer Hospital & Research Centre (SKMCH&RC) and China Anti Cancer Association (CACA).