Working collaboratively with vulnerable women to identify the best implementation gains by screening cervical cancer more effectively in European countries

CBIG-SCREEN aims to tackle inequality in cervical cancer screening (CCS) continuum.

Though CCS programmes drastically reduce cervical cancer mortality, they remain largely inaccessible and underused by subpopulations of vulnerable women, creating inequality in the European healthcare system.

CCS programmes rarely reach the subgroups at highest risk, adding to the challenges underserved populations already face in their efforts to maintain their socioeconomic and physical health.

CBIG-SCREEN will create a Europe-wide knowledge framework around barriers to CCS and generate policies, programmes, communications and other required services to meet the needs of underserved sub-populations of women with inherent high-risk of cervical cancer and low (perceived) access to proper healthcare routes.

CBIG-SCREEN will be working collaboratively with vulnerable and underserved women to identify the interventions that will more effectively engage and retain them in CCS programmes in European countries.

Through stakeholder engagement, mathematical analyses, and structured reviews of current policies, our consortium will collect, analyse, and share knowledge about shortcomings and opportunities for improving CCS continuum that will directly translate to policy recommendations and be used to adapt and extend national CCS with interventions tailored to vulnerable subpopulations.

By deploying screening programmes aimed specifically to serve vulnerable women we can thus leverage limited resources to quickly reduce CCS mortality.

Our interventions aim to reduce health inequality by increasing screening ratios among vulnerable women from 26% to 45% and intend to offer support to policymakers and national programmes to help Europe reach or exceed the WHO 2030 target of screening >70% of women for cervical cancer.

CBIG-SCREEN project will realise the needed improvements in the European screening policies to address the current inequities and thus accelerate cervical cancer elimination.