Creating a cancer advocacy program in Indonesia.

Abstract

105 Background: Political will is crucial for successful cancer control. The ASCO Asia-Pacific Leadership Development Program tasked our group to address this issue. We identified the development of cancer advocacy in the Asia-Pacific as a key enabler, and Indonesia as ideal to develop and pilot a generalisable program. Indonesia has 270M citizens spread over 17,000 islands and 38 provinces posing major challenges for cancer control. There are no established cancer advocacy platforms in Indonesia with limited advocacy knowledge and readiness in the oncology community. Methods: Our vision is to establish a sustainable home for cancer control networks, with wide outreach throughout Indonesia. Our missions are to bridge the gap between cancer experts, patients, and policy makers; establish a network of cancer control platforms widely reaching to local districts, and empower cancer advocacy. This project proposes 2 main objectives. Firstly to cultivate cancer advocacy with a two-tier approach. We plan to collaborate with ASCO advocacy experts to develop a curriculum for cancer advocacy training, which would be conducted at an Indonesian cancer society meeting for oncologists. Thereafter, to create a web-based on-demand advocacy training for the wider community including nurses, patients, carers, and others using interactive e-learning activities. The second objective is to set up provincial cancer control platforms. These will be established by oncologists who have completed cancer advocacy training, to reach out to their local stakeholders. These provincial platforms will identify local cancer care gaps, and develop strategies to improve cancer control locally. The target is for these groups to hold at least one cancer awareness activity each year. At the national level, we plan to hold annual national cancer forums focusing on cancer advocacy, to congregate local advocacy champions and policy makers. This meeting will help cancer experts, advocates, and other stakeholders to meet with decision makers. Results: We plan for at least one oncologist from each Indonesian province to attend the advocacy training program in the first year. This will be expanded in the second year to include at least 2 participants per province in the on-demand cancer advocacy program. The national cancer control forum is planned for year 2. Conclusions: We aspire to build a sustainable, provincial training program for cancer advocacy, and to develop provincial cancer control networks in Indonesia. Once implemented, this model can be modified for application in other Asia Pacific countries.