Researchers and institutions with work to propose can write to cancer.prev.ethio@gmail.com, or telephone +251 92 012 4183. A preliminary enquiry is as welcome as a full proposal. The useful things to include are the question the study would answer, which of the research areas below it sits in, the design and setting you have in mind, and what you would want from the Ethiopian Organization for Cancer Prevention and Research (CPR – Ethiopia). We work from Addis Ababa.
Collaboration so that prevention and early detection programmes reach further than any one organisation could take them is part of the aim we set out on our about page.
What we cover
Our research programme runs through the units below. Behavioural research covers the behaviours that raise cancer risk and what supports participation in evidence-based screening, including basic behavioural and psychological science, interventions in tobacco use and in diet and energy balance, communication and informatics, and surveillance of the public’s use of cancer information. Cancer health services research covers value-based cancer services across the care continuum, using real-world outcomes and cost data, and takes in patient outcomes and patients’ experience of services. Tobacco control research covers research and evidence dissemination to prevent, treat and control tobacco use.
Questions a proposal can take on
Open questions in the Ethiopian evidence base, across those units:
- The household bill. What an Ethiopian family pays to be screened, assessed or treated for cancer, and how many cancer-affected households face catastrophic expenditure
- Cervical screening delivery. How many facilities offer screening, how many treatment devices are working, and how both vary by region; the most recent national coverage estimate is for 2019
- The specialist cancer workforce. A headcount of oncologists, radiation oncologists, medical physicists and pathologists, alongside the doctors and nurses already counted
- Tobacco behaviour. Second-hand smoke exposure, quit attempts, advice to quit from a health worker, and what Ethiopians believe about tobacco — the behavioural domains of the 2024 national survey
- Law in practice. Compliance with, and enforcement of, the smoke-free and sales provisions of Proclamation 1112/2019
- Cancer registration. Ethiopia reported to WHO in 2021 that it operates a population-based cancer registry; IARC’s Cancer Incidence in Five Continents and Cancer Over Time give a different account, and every Ethiopian cancer figure currently rests on modelled estimates extrapolated from partial subnational registration
How a proposal is reviewed
The Scientific Research Committee advises the Board of Directors on our research and on the funding of that research, and reviews research projects to ensure that ethical standards are met and that the confidentiality of participants’ information is protected.
The International Advisory Board provides high-level advice on individual research projects. Its members are leading academic experts and clinicians appointed for their expertise in a field relevant to cancer control research, and for their availability for consultation. The governance page sets out what each body does.