Breast, cervical and colorectal cancer cause more than 250,000 deaths each year in Europe. This represents 20% of overall cancer mortality. While substantial progress has been made in the detection and treatment of these cancers, there is a persisting inequality in cancer burden across European countries.
Screening has been introduced in several European countries in an effort to reduce cancer burden. However, these programmes vary considerably and the long-term effectiveness of screening has only been assessed in a few. In an effort to identify opportunities to improve cancer outcomes across Europe, EU-TOPIA (Towards improved screening for breast, cervical and colorectal cancer in all of Europe), a five year project (2015-2020) funded by the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 programme, is now underway.