Karen Canfell receives AC for her work to eliminate cervical cancer
Karen Canfell has received the top honour for her ground-breaking work to eliminate cervical cancer in Australia and worldwide.
The scientist playing a key role in the effort to eliminate cervical cancer in Australia by 2035, and then to defeat it worldwide, has been recognised with the top Order of Australia honour.
Epidemiologist Karen Canfell and her team are behind the national and global strategy to tackle cervical cancer with vaccines, screening programs, and treatment.
Her team’s modelling is the basis for a 2035 target to eliminate cervical cancer in Australia, announced last year, which will probably lead to us being the first nation in the world to achieve this landmark goal.
Professor Canfell said she had been working on cancer control for the past 30 years and in the late 1990s began paying close attention to the human papillomavirus (or HPV) – a common sexually transmitted infection – which is responsible for nearly all cervical cancers.
The HPV vaccine – developed from research at the University of Queensland by Ian Frazer and Jian Zhou – is a key element of the strategy, as well as screening to pick up signs of the cancer as early as possible.
“My work, really from the beginning, was about how to integrate and bring together vaccination with cervical screening in a way that maximises benefits for women and people with a cervix,” Professor Canfell said.
She is the inaugural director of the Daffodil Centre, a joint venture between the University of Sydney and Cancer Council NSW, which conducts research into cancer control and advises governments and policymakers in Australia and overseas.
Professor Canfell said it was a privilege to be involved in the push to eliminate cervical cancer in Australia and worldwide.
Drawing on her team’s work, in 2020 the World Health Organisation launched a global strategy to beat cervical cancer, starting with a 90-70-90 goal to be reached by 2030.
It aims for 90 per cent of girls to be fully vaccinated with HPV vaccine by age 15 years, 70 per cent of women screened by 35 years of age and again by 45, and 90 per cent of women with cervical disease receiving treatment.
“We provided (the WHO with) some of the core estimates of what could be achieved with the scale-up of vaccination and HPV-based cervical screening and also better access to treatment, especially in low and middle-income countries,” Professor Canfell said.
She said Australia is playing a major role in the global elimination effort, starting with the science that led to the HPV vaccine. Then, in 2017, Australia was one of the first countries to apply a new molecular test for the HPV virus – a big improvement on the pap smear test used previously.
Professor Canfell’s Daffodil Centre also leads the Elimination Partnership in the Indo-Pacific for Cervical Cancer, a federal government-funded effort to help countries in our region reduce the prevalence of cervical cancer and make treatment available to more people.
Professor Canfell said the news that she was receiving an AC was a “huge surprise”.
“I’m just really grateful and just thankful for the people that I work with at the moment and the wonderful team that we have,” Professor Canfell said.
She said she was delighted the citation for her AC award mentioned her mentorship of other researchers “because that’s just really important to me to be able to help others not repeat the same mistakes I’ve made, and to navigate a career that isn’t the easiest sometimes”.
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