Richard Doll Seminar - The road to cervical cancer elimination: what will it involve and how long will it take?

Karen Canfell is Director of Research at Cancer Council NSW and Professor at the University of Sydney in Australia. Her work involves the evaluation and translation of new strategies for cancer control. A focus has been the interplay between HPV vaccination, cervical screening, and treatment. She leads a Centre of Research Excellence in Cervical Cancer Control, funded by Australia’s National Health and Medical Research Council, which has a regional and global agenda. Her group’s work underpins the transformation of the National Cervical Screening Program in Australia which in 2017 moved to HPV testing to replace Pap smears. She is co-PI of an ongoing large-scale trial, Compass, which will provide ongoing information on cervical screening in an HPV-vaccinated population. She leads one of the three modelling groups who have worked closely with the WHO to support their strategic plans for cervical cancer elimination; this work directly informed the WHO elimination strategy, launched in 2020. She is also co-chair of the Steering Group for the Covid-19 and Cancer Global Modelling Consortium (CCGMC.org) which aims to quantify the global impact of the pandemic and assist in recovery planning for cancer outcomes.