Cancer, a challenging group of diseases, is expected to have a 77 percent increase in new cases by 2050. In the European Union, cancer cases are estimated to reach 3.7 million by 2045. Overall, the population of people living with cancer is rising faster than the advancements in science, aimed at treating the group of diseases. This implies that the focus of healthcare over the coming years will be on delivering care to the population, in the best way possible.
Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP), launched on February 3rd, 2021, anticipated this rise in cases and became the first initiative in the EU to tackle a specific disease at the supranational level. It brought together Member States and the European institutions to jointly work together on the area of health that is a national competence. EBCP has already given rise to 32 key actions and 10 flag initiatives addressing the entire continuum of cancer care.
EU Joint Action JANE (2022-2024) paved the way towards the creation of Networks of Expertise (NoEs) on cancer, having as main goals (a) to prepare everything necessary to launch 7 new NoEs in the following domains:
personalized primary prevention; survivorship
palliative care
omic technologies
hi-tech medical resources
one or more complex & poor-prognosis cancer(s)
young adults with cancer,
and (b) to critically evaluate existing models of current and future EU networking with a view to optimizing the functioning of the new NoEs building on previous and ongoing EU networking experiences, and finding solutions rooted in the European oncology community.
