European Cervical Screening Quality Assurance Update

ongoing

The European Commission (EC) has supported the development of quality assurance (QA) benchmarks and best practice recommendations for cervical screening in Europe since 1993. The European Council recommendations reinforced by the QA guidelines have had a positive impact on the quality and coverage of cervical screening in Europe. However, the guidelines now need updating to address the evolution of prevention methods, increasing diversity in socio-demographic characteristics of the screening population, as well as inequalities in access to screening that exist between and within countries. The updated guidelines also need to move from consensus-based to evidence-based recommendations derived from systematic reviews while retaining the flexibility needed to individualise decisions. We believe that an updated set of European guidelines and QA scheme for cervical screening needs to be implementation driven, modelled on the EC Initiative on Breast Cancer (ECIBC) and ongoing initiative on colorectal cancer (ECICC). Our proposed project entitled “European Cervical Screening QA Update (EUCervScreen_QA)” will lead to the EC initiative on cervical cancer (ECICvC), which will provide independent, evidence-based science and knowledge, supporting EU policies to improve cervical screening and HPV vaccination with high quality and coverage. The IARC is well placed to lead this work with extensive experience in developing guidelines, as well as relevant networks and active projects on improving cancer screening in Europe. The guideline development process will be transparent and provide a clear explanation of relationships between alternative care options and their health outcomes. EUCervScreen_QA will produce the third, in the series of QA guidelines, to be published on the web-hub of the Joint Research Centre (JRC).