Let’s Talk Prostate Cancer Expert Group issues five Calls to Action for EU policymakers to improve PCa treatment
The Let’s Talk Prostate Cancer Expert Group has released five Calls to Action for the 2019-2024 EU legislative period to address key challenges in the treatment of people with advanced prostate cancer in Europe.
The Expert Group, chaired by MEP Tiemo Wölken (DE, on the left in the photo next to Prof. Hein Van Poppel), brings together representatives from key European stakeholder organisations in the field of prostate cancer, among which the European Association of Urology (EAU).
As described in the Call to Action, a considerable unmet need exists in the field of prostate cancer treatment. The Expert Group has issued the following five Calls to Action for EU policymakers to consider:
- Prioritisation: The Expert Group calls on policymakers to become ambassadors of awareness campaigns at EU, national, and regional level to increase the knowledge and understanding of the challenges that people with prostate cancer face.
- Awareness: A call for the inclusion of prostate cancer in national cancer plans to showcase mortality and incidence rates across countries and to raise awareness of socio-economic, ethnic, national, and regional inequalities.
- Healthcare inequalities: In addition to the planned Cancer Inequalities Registry, the Expert Group calls on European, national, and regional policymakers to support research into the inequalities that affect people with prostate cancer, including along socio-economic, ethnic, national, and regional lines.
- Access: The Expert Group calls on Member States to improve timely access to high-quality multidisciplinary and multi-professional prostate cancer services at every stage of the treatment and care pathway as promoted by the Essential Requirements for Quality Cancer Care.
- Health system organisation: The Expert Group calls for multidisciplinary and multi-professional teams to provide diagnostics as well as the right treatment and care at the right time to people with advanced prostate cancer.
The full Call to Action can be found here. In addition, the Expert Group published an analysis comparing the political prioritisation of prostate cancer and breast cancer across Europe between January 2015 and January 2020, which can be read here.
The organisations that constitute the Expert Group besides the EAU are Europa Uomo, the European Oncology Nursing Society (EONS), the European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC), and the European Association of Urology Nurses (EAUN). The Expert Group is supported by Astellas Pharma Europe Ltd.