TogetHER for Health Newsletter: January 23, 2025

Dear Supporter, 

Every January, TogetHER for Health joins our partners in commemorating Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, a time to inform others about the importance of cervical health, celebrate progress towards global cervical cancer elimination, and raise our collective voice to hold decision makers accountable to commitments – or lack thereof – to increase access to the vaccines, screening and early treatment that can save women’s lives from this preventable cancer.

Here’s our week-by-week rundown of TogetHER’s Cervical Cancer Awareness Month activities: 

1. We launched our new Voices TogetHER series in the first week of January with a new video laying out our key activities and what inspires us. 

2. On January 14th, in collaboration with the Commonwealth Secretariat and Roche Diagnostics, we launched a new policy report calling for a holistic approach to global cervical health as countries work towards global cervical cancer elimination targets. 

3. This week we’re celebrating the awardees of our annual Cervical Cancer Grants Program on social media. We aim to launch our next cycle of funding in Spring 2025. Details to come – stay tuned to this newsletter. 

4. Next week we’ll be highlighting the work of TogetHER’s member organizations in fighting for cervical health around the globe. 

What ties all these activities together? To us, it’s the idea that ending this preventable killer of women requires an all-hands-on-deck approach that isn’t limited to one approach, one intervention, or one type of organization. Cervical Cancer Awareness Month is a time to remember that each of us has a role to play to eliminate cervical cancer.

Introducing Voices TogetHER, Telling Cervical Health’s Story

This month, TogetHER is proud to launch Voices TogetHER, an ongoing series shining a light on the people and programs striving tirelessly to inspire, educate and ultimately reach girls and women with information and services to reduce cervical cancer risk among women today, and protect girls in the future.

We’re excited to kick off the series by sharing this short video which provides perspective on our work, our programs, our priorities, and our partners, some of whom we’ll be highlighting in future Voices TogetHER installments. 

Check out the first entry in our Voices TogetHER series!

New Policy Report: Strengthening the Pathway to Cervical Cancer Elimination

The WHO’s global cervical cancer elimination strategy calls for three complementary targets to be scaled: vaccination, screening and treatment. Together, these interventions can save 62 million women’s lives in low- and middle-income countries in the next 100 years. This newly published report outlines the significant progress that HPV vaccination programs are making in reaching more girls globally, thanks to unprecedented political and financial support. In order to save the lives of women today, the same level of commitment must be brought to bear for cervical cancer screening and treatment. 

This new report – published by TogetHER in partnership with the Commonwealth Secretariat and support from Roche Diagnostics – lays out the case for increasing investments toward a holistic approach for the elimination of cervical cancer using effective tools that are available today. These include HPV tests, automated tools to improve clinical decision-making, and patient navigators to support women for treatment and follow-up. The report offers case studies from successful programs in a variety of settings and highlights the importance of strengthening health systems for cervical cancer prevention. 

Read the new policy report!

Don’t Miss This Year’s Us vs. HPV Week – January 27-31

This year marks the 7th annual Us vs. HPV Week, jointly hosted by the American Medical Women’s Association (AMWA) and the Global Initiative Against HPV and Cervical Cancer (GIAHC),  organized around a series of webinars featuring a who’s who of experts and advocates for cervical cancer prevention.

This year’s series will take place over the week of January 27-31, with a different webinar topic each day. There will also be a special screening of the Conquering Cancer USA documentary on Wednesday, January 29th. (Keep an eye out for some familiar faces.) More details – including how to register – can be found here.

A small reflection before we close this newsletter: last week I was moved by a piece in the New York Times by columnist and women’s health champion Nick Kristof titled, “Don’t the Lives of Women and Girls Matter?” Kristof tells the stories of a number of women whose lives have been altered by shifts in United States investments in and away from global women’s health organizations like the UN Population Fund. The article is paywalled, but I’ll share this immensely powerful section: 

Cervical cancer isn’t controversial like abortion, and so rarely gets discussed — which means it also doesn’t get addressed. It kills some 350,000 women a year worldwide, overwhelmingly in poor countries; in three dozen countries, it kills more women than any other cancer. It’s an excruciating and humiliating disease, sometimes diagnosed in part by the stench of rotting flesh.

So thank goodness for groups like the U.N. Population Fund and MSI, for taking on reproductive health in a way that isn’t performative or ideological but actually saves lives. 

Such investments in women’s health preserve lives, keep families together, and strengthen communities. This Cervical Cancer Awareness Month, let’s remember to support one another and our respective missions, and put women’s health first. 

In partnership, 

Heather White

TogetHER for Health
Working together to save women from cervical cancer