Covid-19's Enduring Impact on Global Cancer Prevention and Control: Lessons Learned and Next Steps
July 13, 2023 | 9:00 AM – 11:00 AM
Virtual Conference
The COVID-19 pandemic challenged the capacity of many health systems, making access to cancer detection, diagnosis, and treatment services difficult. These acute challenges impacted preventative services and treatment outcomes and will likely result in increased cancer incidence and mortality over the next several years. Despite significant global advances in the prevention and treatment of COVID-19, the pandemic continues to impact cancer research, public health measures, and care delivery. This is particularly true in LMICs, where fewer resources are available to mitigate the effects of the pandemic and COVID-19 vaccine rollouts are stretching out over multiple years.
The purpose of this virtual mini symposium is to highlight NCI Center for Global Health funded studies seeking to contribute to understanding the impact of COVID-19 on global cancer prevention and control, including the direct effects of COVID-19 in cancer patients or the indirect health, economic, and sociocultural impacts of the pandemic across the cancer continuum.
The virtual symposium is broken into two sessions, the first focused on interactions between SARS-CoV-2 and oncogenic viruses, which will explore issues of immunity and infections in cancer patients in the context of COVID-19 as well as the impact of COVID-19 on the prevention and control of cancers associated with infectious etiologies, especially where there is a significant epidemiologic backdrop of HIV. The second session will focus on delays in access to cancer prevention, detection, diagnosis, and treatment services and approaches tested during the pandemic to address those challenges.