ICBP Module 8 Paper

The International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership (ICBP) is a global partnership of clinicians, academics, data experts and policymakers. The innovative collaboration seeks to quantify international variation in cancer survival, incidence and mortality in high-income countries, as well as identify the factors that might be driving these differences. ICBP’s vision is to inform international efforts to improve cancer outcomes, underpinned by robust insights from research.

The ICBP are pleased to share that our latest paper Exploring the link between cancer policies and cancer survival: A comparison of International Cancer Benchmarking Partnership countries has been published in the Lancet Oncology. The paper establishes direct links between cancer policies and cancer outcomes across high-income countries. This is one of a series looking at the organisation and structure of health systems and has included a conceptual logic model, visualising the key health system factors in the cancer patient pathways and key stakeholder views on the role of health service capacity and leadership. To read more about the novel cancer policy index please click the button below.

Spotlight on Urological Cancers

CRUK have developed a guide to support the timely referral of suspected prostate cancer. The guide included key information on the use of PSA testing in the asymptomatic and symptomatic population as well as summarising the benefits and limitations of PSA testing. Access the guide below.

NB Medical are hosting a Hot Topics Urological Cancers Clinic Live Webinar on Tuesday 8 November. Click here to register now to join the live event or access the content on demand.

CRUK have recently updated the Urological Module on DNUK. Click here to access the module at the Cancer Learning Centre.

NHS England relaunched their ‘Help Us Help You’ Abdominal and Urological Campaign on Monday 31st October which is running throughout November. The campaign will focus on encouraging the public to contact their GP practice if they are worried about symptoms of abdominal and urological cancers.

The campaign focuses on the symptoms of tummy discomfort or diarrhoea that lasts for three weeks or more - which can indicate a number of abdominal cancers, or blood in urine, seen even just once, which is a potential indicator of urological cancers such as bladder or kidney cancer.

You can download resources for NHS England's campaign here.

Northern Ireland Early Diagnosis Campaign

We ran an advertising campaign in Northern Ireland to encourage those most at risk of cancer to present to their GP with potential signs/symptoms in partnership with the Public Health Agency (PHA) and Northern Ireland Cancer Network (NICaN). The campaign launched on 1st September 2022 and ran for six weeks on TV, social media, print publications, out of home, CRUK shops and in community pharmacy sites.

To support health professionals during the campaign, we ran a webinar with GPNI and NICaN ‘How to Spot Cancer Earlier’, hosted by Dr Laurence Dorman, with a special guest speaker Professor Willie Hamilton. You can watch the webinar on demand below. Password: COVID19

The webinar received phenomenally positive feedback, with 90% of 122 respondents rating the webinar at 8/10 or higher, and 39.3% rating 10/10. Feedback also included comments from GPs such as ‘Enjoyed the overview of early cancer diagnosis, good to hear the importance of doing more basic tests and gut feeling and safety netting for cancer diagnosis interesting ‘ and ‘Dr Dorman's talk made me think about things we can do in the practice to aid in early cancer diagnosis, mostly practical and simple things which could make a big difference.'

Conferences

Early Detection of Cancer Conference

Early detection of cancer is a key priority for us so we were excited to attend this year’s Early Detection of Cancer Conference hosted by the international collaboration between the Knight Cancer Institute at Oregon Health & Science University, the Canary Center at Stanford and Cancer Research UK. We heard from leaders and experts in early detection, cancer research and bioengineering about their ground-breaking research. It was great to see the innovative approaches to solving some of the big problems in early detection and to discuss the future of the field with the experts. It was inspiring to see the efforts going in to make the amazing progress being made. We look forward to seeing the development of the research, and progress in the field in a years’ time at the next Early Detection of Cancer Conference.

World Cancer Congress

The ICBP programme management team attended the World Cancer Congress in Geneva and presented lessons learned on how international collaboration has accelerated cancer outcomes and influenced policy within the wider cancer community. They also co-ordinated networking opportunities and reached out to the global cancer community to identify opportunities for future collaboration.

The ICBP team had the opportunity to share the latest research and insights:

• Cancer Pathways researcher Yoryos Lyratzopoulos presented among those nominated for the Best Scientific Abstracts for risk factors and implications of colon and rectal cancer diagnosis as an emergency presentation: an ICBP study.
• Clinical lead Dr Christian Finley chaired a digital ICBP session on Improving Survival for Lung Cancer with case studies presented from Canada, the UK, and Australia.
• Health systems researcher Ellen Nolte presented Exploring the link between cancer policies and cancer survival across ICBP countries.

To stay-up-to-date with the latest international research and future directions, visit the ICBP website and sign-up to the ICBP newsletter. Do reach out to the team if you attended the conference.