Foundational programs and projects are supportive elements of INCTR’s overall activities focused on various aspects of education, training, and infrastructure building that are not related to disease-specific projects.  Projects may be relevant to or coordinated by major programs such as the Clinical Research Program or the Pathology Program or they may be stand-alone projects that could be elevated into programs, if successful.  The major goals of the Foundational Programs and Projects are to identify new areas of endeavor, new collaborative opportunities, or activities that are more general than current on-going projects.

Foundational programs and projects include:

• Thematic Workshops

  The purpose of these workshops is to identify obstacles to effective cancer control - and potential solutions - in selected thematic areas of relevance to specific countries or regions.

• Cataloguing the Evidence Base and Undertaking Systematic Review

  The purpose of endeavors in this area is to instill a scientific approach to cancer control based upon sources of information relevant to cancer or a specific cancer within a country or region and to make this information widely available, to assess its quality and to train health professionals to undertake systematic review of the data. 

• Training Professionals and Providing Educational Tools

  INCTR provides on-site training workshops to health professionals in developing countries and makes educational resources and reference materials such as handbooks available via the web.

• Building Infrastructure for Clinical Trials

  The goals of this initiative are to build and enhance the infrastructure for conducting clinical research in institutions participating in on-going INCTR clinical research projects, to enable them to conduct more investigator-initiated research, and to enable institutions to link together with other institutions as cooperative groups to study optimal approaches to patient care in their own national or regional context, or at an international level.

• Catalyzing and Coordinating Partnerships

  The purpose of this program is to link universities and cancer centers in more affluent countries that are interested in outreach to cancer centers in developing countries with identified training and education needs. Such programs may also entail working on INCTR-initiated projects or developing separate collaborative research programs.

• Community Health Centers

  INCTR works with INCTR Branches and Offices located in developing countries to establish links with community health centers in order to increase the role of these centers in promoting public awareness about the early warning signs of cancer, in screening programs for particular cancers, in the delivery of home-based palliative care services and in the development of links with local NGOs to help raise funds to sustain programs conducted by the health centers.

Contact

For more information about this program, contact Elisabeth Dupont, email: edupont@inctr.be