LMICs already account for 57% of all cancer cases and 65% of deaths globally.  The World Health Organization estimates that 81% of new cancer cases over the next two decades will be diagnosed in an LMIC, many of which are struggling to invest in one of the most complex disease domains to manage.  In addition, global cancer research is insufficiently country-centered and too often still highly ‘colonialized’. LMICs have by far the greatest burden of cancer compared with high-income countries (HICs), more complex cancer ecosystems and a paucity of data to inform cancer policies, and yet support for cancer systems strengthening is abysmal with only 5% of world’s expenditure on cancer in LMIC settings.

Due to ecancer’s focus on supporting oncology professionals from LMICs and the resources that ecancer provides to support oncology professionals across the world, a significant number of the learners who visit ecancer.org are from these countries. In the past 12 months ecancer.org has received 109,955 unique visitors from the Low-income and Lower-middle income countries that are part of this project and has 5,499multi-disciplinary healthcare professionals registered from these countries.

As part of this project, ecancer proposes to develop and deliver educational resources that support the effective implementation of the Choosing Wisely guidelines globally with a particular focus on Africa, Latin America and Asia. Where Choosing Wisely guidelines don’t currently exist (for example in Latin America), ecancer will work with regional societies and experts to develop the guidelines as part of the educational development process of this project. Through increasing the awareness and adoption of these region-specific guidelines, ecancer will help address the disparities in health equity for oncology patients living in LMICs.

Implementation and outreach approach

We will take a region-by-region approach to this project by working with the leading cancer societies and experts in the target geographies. We will work with multi-disciplinary educational committees who have knowledge of the specific educational challenges faced by clinical oncologists, general physicians, nurse practitioners, pharmacists and radiographers in the region and will support us in developing a syllabus to address those needs.