The battle against cancer is wide-ranging and must include:

• a strong fight against the discrimination that too many cancer patients and survivors encounter; and
  
  
• a relentless focus on addressing the many quality of life issues associated with life after a cancer diagnosis.

Such quality of life issues includes the need to enhance supportive and palliative care (psycho-social and drug-related) for patients, as well as the combat of lingering stigma and fear around cancer.

To these ends and more, our Network on Survivorship and Quality of Life will convene, collaborate and coordinate.

Survivorship and Quality of Life are admirably central to EU Health Commissioner Stella Kyriakides’s vision for Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan.  Therefore our Survivorship and Quality of Life Network intends to populate this vital EU policy agenda with energy, evidence, and concrete proposals agreed with our Member Societies.

The Network will build on excellent projects and initiatives on Survivorship and Quality of Life already advanced by members of the network, and highlight important areas of established consensus for progress. This includes, for example, the united view of the cancer community to establish a ‘right to be forgotten’ for cancer survivors when seeking to access financial services. This has proven to be a crucial legislative tool for tackling discrimination. It is already well-established in both France and Belgium and is recommended for codification in all European countries. See the European Cancer Summit resolution on Survivorship (Financial Discrimination) for further information.

Prof Françoise Meunier, Vice President of FEAM, speaking at the European Cancer Summit 2019. View the webcast here.

Our Co-Chairs, Andrew Davies and Csaba Dégi, have convened meetings of participating Member Societies, patient groups, Community 365 and other invited stakeholders, to set the agenda for 2020 and beyond. More information will be available soon.

Two important worksteams have been identified for the Network’s initial focus to address for cancer patients and survivors:

• Physical needs
• Psycho-social needs

The Network is in the process of drafting a position paper for review by our Policy Approval Pathway.  More information will be available when this paper has been published in September 2020.

The organisations involved in the Survivorship and Quality of Life Network have kindly provided relevant links to their work in this Network which can be accessed under “Related Resources” on the right-hand side of this page.

The Network also hosted a session on Survivorship and Quality of Life at the European Cancer Summit on 18 & 19 November. More information here.