City Cancer Challenge Foundation

In a year marked by disruptions caused by the pandemic, with cities being the epicentres of control measures, City Cancer Challenge (C/Can) continued its work with nine cities across Europe, Asia, Latin America and Africa, adapting quickly to the changing environment. The focus was on innovative, forward-thinking strategies that were explored through the Digital Health Discovery Forum. This multi-sectoral partnership, which united experts across regions, identified policy changes and technologyenabling solutions that were deployed by C/Can cities to enable them to continue to deliver quality cancer care through the pandemic.

During 2020, seven cities completed the City Activity Plans (Asunción, Cali, Kumasi, Yangon, Porto Alegre, Tbilisi and Kigali) and advanced the implementation of city-led projects. Overall, 45 city-led projects received technical support through C/Can-supported Technical Cooperation with the support of over 70 global partners. Efforts focused on enhancing the capacity of health professionals, improving quality management systems in pathology, planning quality radiotherapy services and standardising cancer care delivery for a set of cancers prioritised by each city. For example, together with the Breast Health Global Initiative (BHGI), C/Can supported the WHO Global Breast Cancer Initiative, by creating a Guide for Developing Resource-Appropriate Breast Cancer Management Guidelines.

A partnership with Project ECHO was also fast-tracked to set up a series of virtual TeleECHO™ sessions to enable medical professionals across C/Can cities to learn from each other, as well as from international experts in the cancer field, to advance local cancer solutions. This is part of C/Can’s broader effort to coordinate insight-sharing across regions and embrace connected health.

Ahead of October’s 2020 call for applications, the Foundation launched The City of Tomorrow campaign, inviting cities to join C/Can’s global network in tackling the world’s growing cancer burden, with new cities poised to join C/Can in 2021. citycancerchallenge.org