The Joint Action on Cancer Control – CANCON is a common effort between representatives from 17 EU Member States, co-funded by the European Commission (Directorate-General for Health and Food Safety) to harmonise the way we fight cancer in Europe. CANCON aimed to contribute in different ways to reducing the cancer burden in the EU by creating a European Guide on Quality Improvement in Comprehensive Cancer Control.
CANCON succeeds the first Joint Action on cancer, called European Partnership Action Against Cancer – EPAAC.
The European Guide on Quality Improvement in Comprehensive Cancer Control presents key recommendations to potentiate EU countries’ capacity to fight cancer. The recommendations span the whole patient journey from prevention to treatment and survivorship. The Guide explains in detail which measures EU governments should implement to make National Cancer Control Plans more resilient and effective, focusing on key aspects of cancer care: integrated cancer control, community-level cancer control, survivorship and rehabilitation, screening. The Guide is meant for governments, parliamentarians, health care providers and funders, as well as cancer care professionals at every level.
Together with the Guide, CanCon produced also five policy papers regarding hot topics of cancer policy selected and discussed by EU Member States with the support of top European experts on the individual topics.
The key future challenge for the European Cancer Patient Coalition will be now to ensure that these recommendations are implemented at the national level, as well as to well communicate the recommendations and spread them within our national networks, conscious that CanCon provides the best harmonised, shared and evidence-based plan to enhance our healthcare system’s capacity to fight cancer.
The European Cancer Patient Coalition was a key partner of CanCon, and contributed to the drafting of the guide and of the policy papers. ECPC was also invited to the final conference to present the patients’ perspective on the CanCon Guide and Policy Papers.
Additional materials:
European Guide on Quality Improvement in Comprehensive Cancer Control
The programme of the CanCon final event in Malta