Colorectal, breast and cervical cancer cause 155,000 deaths per year in middle income countries (MIC) in Eastern Europe, while there is good evidence that a large proportion could be prevented by organised screening. Although many Eastern European MIC have implemented cancer screening, this is often non-organised, leading to lack of data and quality assurance. Also, coverage is commonly low and minority groups are not reached.
In a previous H2020 project ‘EU-TOPIA’, we developed road maps to improve cancer screening programmes in Europe. In the current project, EU-TOPIA-EAST, these roadmaps will be refined and translated into action plans for three MICs: Georgia (breast), Romania (cervix) and Montenegro (colorectal). These action plans will take local health and social system into account by performing detailed barrier and stakeholder analyses, leading to feasible changes to current screening programmes. Next, we will implement these action plans.
The implemented programmes will be monitored and evaluated using key indicators and decision models to predict long-term and country-wide benefits, harms and cost-effectiveness. During workshops and round-table discussions for policymakers and screening programme coordinators we build capacity and upscale the implementation of these intervention(s) in Equitable, Accessible, and SusTainable (EU-TOPIA-EAST) ways. In this way, the project will improve the prevention and early diagnosis of cancer in real-life settings.
The overall goal of EU-TOPIA-EAST is to implement effective screening programmes for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer in three exemplary MICs in Eastern Europe and to build capacity for screening implementation in other Eastern European and Mediterranean countries, in order to reduce the cancer burden in these countries and to achieve equity in cancer care.
Objectives:
1. Extend, update and refine innovative road maps, initiated in the EU-TOPIA project by Georgia, Montenegro and Romania, into concrete action plans with steps and timeliness to successfully implementing these
2. Follow the steps in the road maps and action plans and implement in some regions the identified feasible interventions in the existing screening programmes in Georgia, Romania and Montenegro
3. Monitor the impact of implemented interventions on important short-term screening performance indicators, such as participation and detection rates
4. Estimate required resources, health outcomes and cost-effectiveness of scaling up the interventions to a national level and to other MIC in Eastern-Europe/Mediterranean using innovative dedicated microsimulation models
5. Disseminate good practices from participating to other countries by organising workshops and round table discussions with national/regional/local policymakers and other stakeholders
