3.N. Workshop: Toward Europe Beating Cancer Plan goal of 80% awareness of the European Code Against Cancer in 2025
Authors:   Organised by: Association of European Cancer Leagues, IARC/WHO,   Chair persons: Carolina Espina (France), Meritxell Mallafré-Larrosa (Belgium)
Published: October 2021

Cancer cases continue rising worldwide and cancer remains a leading cause of death in Europe. Almost 4.4 million new cases of cancer were diagnosed in Europe in 2020 and almost 2 million deaths were due to cancer. These projections will increase to more than 5 million new cases and 2.5 million deaths in 2040, only taking demographic changes into account, and corresponding to around 100 million new cancer patients over the next 20 years. Studies in Europe and elsewhere estimate that around 40% of cancers could be prevented if current understanding of risk and protective factors would be translated into effective primary prevention, with further reductions in cancer incidence and mortality by early detection of cancer. By far tobacco represents the largest contributor to cancer, with studies showcasing its responsibility for around 20% of the cancer burden and thereby causing almost half of all preventable cancers. Other important risk factors include excess weight and unhealthy diet, alcohol, infections and other environmental and occupational exposures. Scientific evidence has been translated into a set of public health recommendations within the European Code against Cancer (ECAC). The ECAC informs the general public on the steps to take to reduce their cancer risk, and is Europe's key cancer prevention tool to improve health literacy on cancer risks and prevention measures. The recently launched Europe's Beating Cancer Plan announced that “The European Code against Cancer will be updated to take into account the latest scientific developments and will add new evidence-based recommendations to improve health literacy. The Cancer Plan will aim to make at least 80% of the population aware of the Code by 2025.” After over three decades of ECAC's promotion, we present the results from the first study assessing its impact in Europe at population and health promoters' level. This study serves as a baseline of the awareness of the ECAC in Europe and paves the way towards a scaled-up systematic evaluation. Also, the French Cancer Barometer has monitored changes in the perception of cancer risk factors over 10,000 people during a 10-year follow-up. Such a national case-study has the potential to be scaled-up at European level. Finally, the Eurobarometer is an Europe-wide tool that provides regular public opinion surveys, including on health, in all Member States. In this workshop we explore options including the Eurobarometer as a potential tool to measure progress towards the Cancer Plan aforementioned goal.

The objectives of this workshop are:

to provide the rationale for a standard, sustainable and Europe-wide tool to measure progress on awareness on the ECAC and its recommendations, in order to reach the goal of 80% awareness of the ECAC by 2025, to build upon national best practices on the assessment of population perceptions on cancer risk factors, to showcase and discuss with participants on available European tools and metrics towards a Cancer Barometer.

Key messages

“What gets measured, gets done”. We call for standard and sustained measuring tools at European level to measure progress towards the health literacy goal of 80% awareness of the Code by 2025. Current awareness of many cancer risk factors and the European Code across Europe is low. The French Cancer Barometer is presented as a country-case study with potential to be scaled-up EU wide.