Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Europe and cancer-related mortality is twice as high among the homeless population.
The CANCERLESS project aims to prevent cancer among underserved homeless populations by delivering person-centred interventions and facilitating their timely access to quality prevention and screening services. The project works with homeless populations in Austria, Greece, Spain and the United Kingdom.
The project plays a crucial role in the field of cancer research and cancer prevention, given its particular focus on highly vulnerable and underserved population. People experiencing homelessness have a life expectancy approximately 30 years shorter than the housed population and have higher prevalence of cancer and mortality. CANCERLESS is the first project tackling cancer among this vulnerable population in Europe. The project’s uniqueness also lies in its participatory co-design approach, which includes the population in decision-making processes of planned interventions, making these context-based and bottom-driven. Such involvement of people who experience homelessness in patient navigation processes contributes to improving access to equitable care and health literacy, and helps remove barriers to services.
Accessing screening programs is particularly challenging for people experiencing homelessness. Besides structural barriers, such as the inability to receive an invitation for screening due to the absence of permanent address or lack of access to health/social insurance, this population faces substantial stigma and discrimination within the health care services due to its complex needs, often compounded by psychiatric comorbidities and trauma. As a result, distrust of the healthcare system prevails, and trauma-sensitive approaches are therefore needed.
The CANCERLESS project has focused on tackling these challenges by adopting a bottom-up intervention approach, which has proved to be highly successful in terms of uptake and acceptance. The pilot intervention involved more than 600 people experiencing homelessness, providing them with cancer prevention services and access to screening, where possible. Moreover, several cases of cancers were diagnosed early enough and could, therefore, be treated with surgical methods. The project consortium played a crucial role in securing additional funds and finding ways to cover the costs of these services, highlighting the need for greater equity in cancer care in Europe.
For additional information, please consult the following LINK.
To access the official CANCERLESS website, please consult the following LINK.
