European Women and Cancer Policy Index

The impact of cancer on women has many facets, so should our tools to address it.

The European Women and Cancer Policy Index is a new practical solution to benchmark countries’ policies and performance in addressing women’s needs in cancer control.

Sitting at the intersection of public health, care delivery and social protection, the Index combines a wide range of carefully selected indicators into a visual overview of progress throughout the European Union. It provides policy-makers with a tool to act, and make women’s cancer rights a reality.

Learn about how your country ranks and join us in advocating for better cancer policies for women everywhere in Europe.

In photos: the Index launch at the European Parliament

About the composition of the Index

The European Women and Cancer Policy Index constitutes the first systematic assessment of cancer policies and outcomes impacting specifically women in European countries. It includes four main categories:

Primary prevention, covering the topics of tobacco, alcohol, overweight and HPV

Screening, covering breast and cervical cancer

Quality of care and quality of life, covering survival and mortality-to-incidence rates for women’s cancers as well as fertility preservation

Informal carers, covering the aspects of legal definition or identification, support and financial compensation

Under these topics, indicators are included that fit the below requirements:

They address cancer or relevant public health/social policies that are specifically targeting either women, or issues that are known to be specific to women (i.e. either exclusive to women or impacting them significantly more than men)
They are considered suitable for cross-country comparison and correspond either to the qualitative assessment of national policy status or to a quantitative performance indicator

Based on these indicators, the Index includes benchmarking scores for each category, combined into overall ranking scores, for each country. Details on the selected indicators and corresponding sources are available here.

About the Index expert group

The development of the European Women and Cancer Policy Index was guided by a multidisciplinary expert group, bringing together leading healthcare professionals, patient and health policy advocates, civil society representatives and academic experts with particular interest and relevance to the topic of women and cancer, and women’s rights generally:

	Prof. Isabel Rubio, President of the European Cancer Organisation and Co-Chair of the Women and Cancer workstream
	Prof. Paola Anna Erba, President of the European Association of Nuclear Medicine and Co-Chair of the Women and Cancer workstream
	Marina Davidashvili, Head of Policy and Research, European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights
	Anita Fincham, Advocacy Manager, Fertility Europe
	Prof. Ophira Ginsburg, Provost’s Visiting Professor of Global Cancer Equity, School of Public Health, Imperial College London and Consultant, Médecins Sans Frontières
	Prof. Anna Kirby, Royal Marsden Hospital & Institute of Cancer Research, UK, and Past-President, European Society of Radiotherapy and Oncology (ESTRO)
	Dr. Urška Košir, Research Manager, Institute for Health Economics Sweden
	Dr. Meritxell Mallafré-Larrosa, Technical Manager, Research Lead, City Cancer Challenge (C/Can)
	Teresa Saracino, Research & Liaison Officer, Europa Donna – The European Breast Cancer Coalition
	Dr. Isabelle Soerjomataram, Cancer Surveillance branch, International Agency for Research on Cancer
	Dr. Heidi Ulrike Siller, Project Manager, European Institute for Women’s Health, clg
	Marzia Zambon, Executive Director, Europa Donna – The European Breast Cancer Coalition