Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
. 2024 Aug 27;82(Suppl 1):140.
doi: 10.1186/s13690-024-01366-6.

Policy brief of the Belgian Europe's Beating Cancer Plan mirror group: children, adolescents and young adults with cancer

Hélène A Poirel  1 , Gabrielle Schittecatte  2 , Fabienne Van Aelst  2 ; on behalf of the Thematic Working Group (TWG) ‘Children, Adolescents and Young Adults (CAYAs) with Cancer’
Collaborators, Affiliations

Policy brief of the Belgian Europe's Beating Cancer Plan mirror group: children, adolescents and young adults with cancer

Hélène A Poirel et al. Arch Public Health. .

Abstract

Children and Adolescents and Young Adults with cancer represent a young population with specific needs, which need to be addressed in a patient- and cancer-driven way. There is an urgent need to support and extend the ongoing initiatives in Belgium. First, multidisciplinary care programmes dedicated to children need to be reviewed, and those for Adolescents and Young Adults need to be developed with close collaboration between paediatric and adult oncology and haematology teams. This needs to be done considering the entire patient journey; from cancer prevention, diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, follow-up of late effects, transition pathways between paediatric and adult wards, and palliative care. Second, national haemato/oncology precision programmes adapted to this young population with rare cancers, including infrastructure to manage cancer gene predisposition in CAYAs with cancers and their relatives, needs to be developed. This multi-level plan aims to ensure improved outcome with high quality of care for the young population with cancer in Belgium in line with Europe's Beating Cancer Plan initiatives.

Keywords: Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA) with cancer; Childhood cancer; Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan (EBCP); Policy Brief; Policy Recommendations.

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

References

    1. Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. https://health.ec.europa.eu/system/files/2022-02/eu_cancer-plan_en_0.pdf. Accessed 4 July 2023.
    1. European Reference Network for Paediatric Oncology. https://paedcan.ern-net.eu/. Accessed 4 Oct 2023.
    1. EU Network of Youth Cancer Survivors - EU-CAYAS-NET. https://health.ec.europa.eu/non-communicable-diseases/cancer/europes-bea.... Accessed 18 Mar 2024.
    1. Ferrari A, Stark D, Peccatori FA, Fern L, Laurence V, Gaspar N, Bozovic-Spasojevic I, Smith O, De Munter J, Derwich K, Hjorth L, van der Graaf WTA, Soanes L, Jezdic S, Blondeel A, Bielack S, Douillard JY, Mountzios G, Saloustros E. Adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer: a position paper from the AYA Working Group of the European Society for Medical Oncology (ESMO) and the European Society for Paediatric Oncology (SIOPE). ESMO Open. 2021;6(2):100096. 10.1016/j.esmoop.2021.100096 - DOI - PMC - PubMed
    1. Belgian Cancer Registry, Brussels, 2024.

LinkOut - more resources