26 June 2019 – The increasing awareness among people working on global health and development of the enormous burden of cervical cancer is an important accomplishment for advocates, but only the first step. TogetHER for Health recognizes that health policy officials and health care providers are moved to take the next step—from understanding to action—when they see examples of successful efforts to provide cervical cancer prevention, in settings that resemble their own.

TogetHER has launched an initiative to highlight such successful programs by making case studies available on our website. These include case studies authored by TogetHER and those published by our partners and other organizations. 

We published the first TogetHER case study, called “Building capacity to address cervical cancer in Ghana,” this week. It is about the remarkable team at The Cervical Cancer Prevention and Training Centre (CCPTC) at Catholic Hospital, Battor, Ghana. Led by Dr. Kofi Effah, CCPTC staff members train health care workers from Ghana and beyond to provide cervical cancer prevention services back in their own communities. Dr. Effah’s vision is to reach every woman in Ghana with cervical cancer prevention.

CCPTC trainees are exposed to a variety of tools for cervical cancer service provision in low-resource settings, and the case study also highlights the utility of one of those tools, MobileODT’s EVA mobile colposcopy system.

TogetHER plans to publish more case studies soon. These will showcase the efforts of our partners in other high-burden countries, to similarly illustrate the potential for well-designed cervical cancer programs to have a powerful health impact. We welcome suggestions for the topics of future case studies, and we also encourage organizations with successful programs to send us your own case studies for inclusion on our website. Please contact us at [email protected].

Byline: Jennie Aylward