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IAEA and IARC leaders outline plans to expand radiotherapy, strengthen screening and deepen partnerships
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Summary
IAEA and IARC officials described coordinated efforts to expand radiotherapy capacity, improve screening access, and help countries develop national cancer control plans, highlighting IAEA’s Raise of Hope initiative and IARC’s CANSCREEN data platform.
Oliver Bogler, host of the National Cancer Institute’s podcast Inside Cancer Careers, spoke with two international cancer leaders about efforts to close global gaps in cancer diagnosis and care.
Lisa Stevens, director of the Program of Action for Cancer Therapy (PACT) within the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), described PACT’s role in integrating radiotherapy, nuclear medicine and diagnostic imaging into national cancer-control strategies. Stevens said PACT teams, working with WHO and IARC, conduct on-site assessments, collect data and deliver evidence-based reports that countries can use to develop or update national cancer control plans and technical-cooperation projects.
Stevens outlined the IAEA’s 2022 “Raise of Hope” initiative as a coordinated push to translate assessments into concrete investments: workforce training (radiation oncologists, medical physicists and radiologists), procurement support for equipment such as linear accelerators and PET scanners, and regulatory and quality-assurance frameworks to ensure safe, timely care. “There are 20 countries in Africa with no public radiotherapy center,” Stevens said, using that figure to illustrate inequities the initiative aims to address. She added that about “50 to 60 percent” of cancer patients will need radiotherapy at some point during treatment or palliation, underscoring the clinical importance of expanding capacity.
Andre Lopez Carvallo, deputy head of the Early Detection, Prevention and Infectious Diseases branch at the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC, part of WHO), emphasized prevention and screening. He described IARC’s core outputs—monographs on carcinogenic exposures, prevention handbooks, and pathology guidance (the “blue books”)—and discussed the CANSCREEN data platform, launched to collect country-level information on screening programs and performance indicators for WHO-recommended services such as cervical, breast and colorectal screening.
Carvallo highlighted two persistent barriers to screening: availability (services close to people’s homes) and affordability. He said countries with universal health coverage generally remove affordability as a barrier, while mobile units and transportation incentives can help improve availability. He also described a forthcoming, public tool (referred to in the episode as a prioritization tool) designed to help stakeholders link prioritized screening barriers to proven, evidence-based interventions.
Both speakers stressed partnership and coordination. Stevens described how the Program of Action for Cancer Therapy, WHO and IARC convene multidisciplinary expert teams to avoid siloed engagements and align technical inputs. She cited collaboration with the Islamic Development Bank on a women’s cancer initiative launched in 2019 and said Raise of Hope now seeks to combine advocacy with procurement and training so radiotherapy investments can be sustainable. Carvallo noted that implementing evidence-based interventions in national health systems requires government involvement and local adaptation; results proven in controlled research settings may not automatically transfer to real-world health systems without contextual adjustments.
Speakers gave examples of implementation models: Carvallo recounted the Barretos Cancer Hospital’s mobile screening trucks in Brazil, which provided mammography and Pap testing in remote areas and relied on municipal commitments to refer and fund treatment through Brazil’s universal health coverage scheme. Stevens and Carvallo both said national cancer control plans should align stakeholders—clinicians, academics, ministries of health, finance and education—and that international resources such as the ICCP portal (International Cancer Control Partnership) help countries find planning templates and toolkits.
The episode concluded with reflections on priorities for the next five years: Stevens said she expects continued demand for national cancer plans and assessments and for partnerships that mobilize funding and technical assistance; Carvallo said he wants to focus on implementation research to adapt interventions to local contexts so screening and prevention achieve measurable population benefits.
The podcast directs listeners to NCI Center for Global Health resources and to the ASGCR symposium call for abstracts (deadline listed in the episode).
