European Women and Cancer Policy Index
The impact of cancer on women has many facets, so too should the tools we use to address it.
The European Women and Cancer Policy Index is the first practical approach for benchmarking the policies and performance of individual countries in addressing women’s needs in cancer control.
Sitting at the intersection of public health, care delivery and social protection, the Index combines a wide range of carefully selected indicators into a visual overview of progress throughout the European Union. It provides policy-makers with a tool to help make women’s cancer rights a reality.
Learn how your country ranks and join us in advocating for better cancer policies for women across Europe.
The European Women and Cancer Policy Index constitutes the first systematic assessment of cancer policies and outcomes impacting specifically women in European countries. It includes four main categories:
- Primary prevention, covering the topics of tobacco, alcohol, overweight and HPV
- Screening, covering breast and cervical cancer
- Quality of care and quality of life, covering survival and mortality-to-incidence rates for women’s cancers as well as fertility preservation
- Informal carers, covering the aspects of legal definition or identification, support and financial compensation
Under these topics, indicators are included that fit the below requirements:
- They address cancer or relevant public health/social policies that are specifically targeting either women, or issues that are known to be specific to women (i.e. either exclusive to women or impacting them significantly more than men)
- They are considered suitable for cross-country comparison and correspond either to the qualitative assessment of national policy status or to a quantitative performance indicator
Based on these indicators, the Index includes benchmarking scores for each category, combined into overall ranking scores, for each country. Details on the selected indicators and corresponding sources are available here.
The development of the European Women and Cancer Policy Index was guided by a multidisciplinary expert group, bringing together leading healthcare professionals, patient and health policy advocates, civil society representatives and academic experts with particular interest and relevance to the topic of women and cancer, and women’s rights generally:
- Prof. Isabel Rubio, President of the European Cancer Organisation and Co-Chair of the Women and Cancer workstream
- Prof. Paola Anna Erba, President of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine and Co-Chair of the Women and Cancer workstream
- Marina Davidashvili, Head of Policy and Research, European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights
- Prof. Ophira Ginsburg, Provost’s Visiting Professor of Global Cancer Equity, School of Public Health, Imperial College London and Consultant, Médecins Sans Frontières
- Prof. Anna Kirby, Royal Marsden Hospital & Institute of Cancer Research, UK, and Past-President, European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO)
- Dr. Urška Košir, Research Manager, Institute for Health Economics Sweden
- Teresa Saracino, Research & Liaison Officer, Europa Donna – The European Breast Cancer Coalition
- Dr. Isabelle Soerjomataram, Cancer Surveillance branch, International Agency for Research on Cancer
- Dr. Heidi Ulrike Siller, Project Manager, European Institute for Women’s Health, clg
- Marzia Zambon, Executive Director, Europa Donna – The European Breast Cancer Coalition
Index authors: Norbert Couespel (ECO), Clémentine Rialland (ECO)
