A Call to Action: #IWD2020

We are proud to join TogetHER and other leading organizations in global health to issue a Call to Action: “Advancing Universal Health Coverage through Cervical Cancer Prevention & Family Planning Integration”. In this document, you’ll find concrete steps that the global community must take to advance integration and ensure comprehensive sexual and reproductive health services for women.

We call on global and national policy makers to:

Support the World Health Organization’s Cervical Cancer Elimination Strategy.
Commit to timely development of cervical cancer guidelines for the use of evidence-based tools and strategies that will facilitate integration. This is particularly important for new
cervical cancer technologies that are shown to improve health outcomes for women and girls while reducing the time and resources required for cervical cancer screening.
Include comprehensive SRH services, including cervical cancer prevention, in universal health coverage and national health insurance schemes. Reflect these services in plans for the provision of comprehensive primary healthcare

We call on multilateral institutions and technical partners to:

Collect robust impact and cost data on integrated programs and services to identify the highest impact and most cost-effective models of integration.
Develop standardized outcome indicators for SRH/cervical cancer integration programs and commit to their consistent measurement.
Document and share best practices in the integration of sexual health and cervical cancer prevention services, including supportive policies, effective demand generation strategies,
and interventions that reduce provider burden and assure program quality.

We call on financial contributors to:

Fund programs that evaluate approaches to integration, so as to identify models that generate high impact, are cost effective, and can reach specific populations in variable
contexts. These evaluations should identify sustainable models for the inclusion of integrated services within national plans for UHC.

We call on advocates to:

Broaden efforts to increase political will for SRH programs that encompass the life course and the full span of risk among girls and women. This includes the increased risk of HPVrelated cancers, including cervical cancer, among women 30 years and older.
Call upon policy makers to make a national commitment to eliminate cervical cancer under the World Health Organization’s Cervical Cancer Elimination Strategy.