TogetHER for Health Newsletter: May 28, 2026

Dear Supporter,

Vaccinating young women and girls against HPV will be key to eliminating cervical cancer for future generations to come. An innovative project in Nepal shows how HPV vaccination programs can also be a launching point for expanding access to screening and preventive treatment.

Our friends at Moonshine Agency – the filmmakers behind the Conquering Cancer documentary series – have produced a short video spotlighting KMC Alumni Health Sector’s creative approach to protecting multiple generations against cervical cancer. 

Last year, Nepal launched its national HPV vaccination campaign to boost protection against HPV-related cancers. Click here to learn how KMC Alumni Health Sector is getting more adult women screened and treated by sending HPV self-testing kits home with vaccinated girls, collecting samples, and connecting women to follow-up services. This program is an exciting step toward ensuring that multiple generations are being protected against this preventable cancer. 

TogetHER is proud to support KMC Alumni Health Sector’s innovative project and other community-led cervical cancer prevention programs in low- and middle-income countries through our Cervical Cancer Grants Program. You can take action to eliminate cervical cancer in communities around the world through our Prevention is the Point campaign, generating the resources we need to fund five new lifesaving projects. 

Watch this great video from Moonshine Agency and learn more about our annual campaign! 

Cervical Cancer Elimination is Not a Given

The world can choose to follow the World Health Organization’s strategy to scale up investments in proven cervical cancer prevention, averting millions of new cases and deaths and putting this preventable cancer on the path to elimination. Or we can let a deadly status quo persist, leading to an estimated 50% increase in the number of annual cervical cancer cases by 2050. That’s over one million more women each year in need of care from a disease we know how to prevent.

Roche’s Sofiat Akinola and President-Elect Dr. Zainab Shinkafi-Bagudu of the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) co-authored a provocative new piece – “Cervical cancer elimination is not a given” – for Roche’s Healthcare Transformers community and republished by the World Economic Forum. The article highlights the risk we run by failing to accelerate support for HPV vaccination, cervical cancer screening, and preventive treatment, with a special emphasis on the need to expand screening and treatment to women who fall outside the age recommendation for HPV vaccines. 

TogetHER provided a quote acknowledging the wide gap between policy commitments and practice, joining our colleagues in calling for critical investments in women’s health. Cervical cancer elimination isn’t just an aspiration for the future. It needs to be reflected in global urgency to not leave any woman in danger of a preventable, deadly cancer we know how to prevent. Read more here.

Data and Guidelines to Strengthen the Global Response to Cervical Cancer 

What we know about cervical cancer prevention and how to improve products and services to ensure high-quality care evolves constantly. Reliable data on what’s working – and what’s not – can drive smart investment choices and build acceptance of safe, effective interventions. And evidence-based guidelines give practitioners vetted strategies to ensure the best possible care for women. 

A new meta-analysis by the University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy (CIDRAP) of 274 prior studies is giving us new insight into the real-world impact of HPV vaccines on cervical cancer – and the results are striking. Looking across these data, CIDRAP’s Vaccine Integrity Project found that HPV vaccines provided protection as high as 90% when administered before the age of 16. The analysis also found that vaccines are exceedingly safe with no noticeable side effects or impact on fertility or pregnancy. Read more here.

The World Health Organization has revised its guidance on screening and treatment of cervical cancer to reflect the particular cancer risk of different HPV genotypes that can be identified by HPV testing. This new technical document can help practitioners refer patients testing positive for specific strains of HPV to the appropriate level of care, depending on risk and the patient’s healthcare context. Learn more here.

It’s not often we cover such a gamut of the response to cervical cancer – powerful storytelling documenting innovative organizations saving lives in communities, advocacy for global investments in such programs, evidence that those investments are already saving lives, and the evolution of guidelines strengthening programs around the world. It really underscores what a comprehensive response is necessary to put this preventable cancer in the history books. 

Finally, we’d like to congratulate Moonshine Agency on the latest installment of their documentary series, Conquering Breast Cancer, which will be released in theaters across Australia in June of 2026, and hopefully throughout the world soon. Watch the trailer here and join us in celebrating this powerful new documentary. 

In partnership,

Heather White

TogetHER for Health
Working together to save women from cervical cancer