5th International Cancer Control Congress
System performance measurement and target setting in the Canadian cancer control system – a five year journey of building indicators and trust
Dr Rami Rahal - Canadian Partnership against Cancer, Canada
The workshop is about the importance of measurement and the importance of evaluating progress against targets. So basically we focus on developing indicators that help assess how well we’re doing in achieving the objectives of the cancer control strategy. It’s about evaluation, it’s about using data to improve quality, that’s really the objective of our work.
We’re hoping that the conference will focus on where we can measure how well we’re doing. Without good data you can implement a lot of good programmes but it’s hard to assess if they’re achieving their objective or not. So really what we want to do is encourage even countries with relatively poor data to help build their capacity and help build the data they have so they can have better ways of evaluating the progress towards achieving targets. So in Peru we have the Plan Esperanza and it has some very important objectives on improving access and improving quality of care and it would be really important to use data to help us understand how well we’re doing in improving access and quality of care and other important factors.
What would be your message to the medical oncology community?
We’re very encouraged that there are national plans being put in place in many Latin American countries, national cancer plans. I think that shows that the governments have a high priority placed on cancer control and that’s very important. We want to build on that investment to improve the quality of care to make sure that everybody has access to good care no matter where they live, no matter how much money they make and no matter what their place of residence is. So really we want to be able to reduce the differences between people and be able to measure that and show that by doing that we have better outcomes overall and we’re able to get closer to beating cancer.
