Our team lead by Igor Grabovac has been successful in securing funding from the Horizon Europe programme from the European Commission looking into patient navigation in cancer prevention services for people experiencing mental-ill health in Europe. Project entiteld “CO-CAPTAIN: Cancer Prevention among Individuals with Mental-Ill Health: Co-Adapting and Implementing Patient Navigation for Primary Cancer Prevention” will build upon the existing ideas and methods established in the CANCERLESS project including participator co-design, implementation science based evaluations, patient navigation and primary cancer prevention. In Europe both cancer and mental health issues constitute leading public health problems, with over 80 million Europeans having mental healt problems and every year 4 million new cancer diagnoses occur in Europe as well. Research so far shows that people who experience mental ill-health have worse cancer outcomes both in terms of incidence and survival – which is often linked to mental illness stigma and inability to timely and appropriately access needed services.
With the new grant, over the next three years, we will look into co-developing a patient navigation based model, implement and evaluate it in Austria, Greece, Poland and Spain and create appropriate guidelines for its implementation on an European level. Partners in this project include academic institutions, local goverments and public health authorities as well as NGOs and companies from several European countries.
You can read the news on the Medical University of Vienna´s homepage as well.
Stay tuned for more information.
