European Women and Cancer Policy Index – Indicators and sources

Selection criteria

The European Women and Cancer Policy Index assesses policies addressing women’s needs either directly (gender-responsive policies) or indirectly, either in the field of cancer control or among public health or social measures with impact on the cancer field, i.e.:

• Cancer or relevant public health/social policies targeting women, in fields of cancer control where either international standards or available evidence point to the specific need for gender-responsive approaches
• Cancer or relevant public health/social policies targeting issues known to be specific to women as part of cancer control, as they either exclusively impact women or have a known significantly higher impact on women than men

By contrast, cancer or relevant public health/social policies reaching women but without a specific gender-responsive element, and cancer control issues impacting women but without any strong evidence for a higher impact on them than on men, would not be considered in scope for the Index.

When it comes to the types of indicators that are included, the Index combines readily available data intelligence into a benchmarking framework for relevant national policy measures and their impacts on women. In practice, this means that indicators should:

• Be suitable for national disaggregation, i.e. correspond to aspects of cancer control typically handled at the national policy level
• Be associated with an existing source of readily available data collected on a wide range of European countries with consistent methodology, enabling meaningful cross-country comparisons
• Correspond either to a qualitative policy lever (i.e. the status of existence and/or implementation of a certain policy intervention) or a quantitative performance indicator (i.e. degree to which a certain cancer control issue or measure is present in the population)

Ideally, and where possible, the latter types of indicators (policy levers and performance indicators) should be combined to reflect both national policy status and its impact in practice. Where relevant, the Index also displays context information items, without including them in the calculation of any benchmarking score.

In this sense, the categorisation of indicators used for the Index follows an approach inspired by European Union monitoring and benchmarking frameworks in the social protection field, including the EU Monitoring Framework on the Council Recommendation on access to affordable, high-quality long-term care.

The following sections include details of indicators included in the Index for each of its categories, as well as corresponding sources, under this categorisation.

Primary Prevention

Screening

Quality of care and quality of life

Informal carers