Funding boost for innovative research to improve cancer screening participation

Professor Mark Jenkins and Dr Claire Nightingale will each receive Australian government funding to advance their innovative cancer screening participation programs.

Professor Jenkins, from the University’s Centre for Cancer Research and School of Population and Global Health, receives $1.5 million to trial the “SMARTERscreen” program, a randomised controlled trial of general practice patient SMS messaging which aims to increase participation in the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program.

It is understood that up to 84,000 lives could be saved through the current national bowel cancer screening program, but that the current participation rate falls below the level needed to achieve this.

Professor Jenkins will be joined by Co-Chief Investigator Professor Shanton Chang, Associate Dean (International) in the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology, and collaborators from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health and the Royal Melbourne Hospital.

Dr Nightingale, Senior Research Fellow from the Melbourne School of Population and Global Health Centre for Health Policy receives $1.4 million toward a project optimising HPV self-collection through general practice, to improve equity and participation in Australia's National Cervical Screening Program.

Dr Nightingale and collaborators will take a whole-of-system approach to generate evidence needed to optimise implementation of a new policy, offering all women and people with a cervix the choice to collect their own cervical screening sample.

This screening pathway has the potential to improve equity and ensure all Australians benefit from the goal of being among the first countries in the world to eliminate cervical cancer as a public health problem.