Youth Cancer Europe is participating in key EU projects which bring together partners to promote research and ensure improved care and support for young people fighting cancer.

FORTEe

FORTEe: exercise intervention for children and adolescents with cancer has received funding amounting to 6.29 million € from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme and is a 5 ½ years-long initiative which started in March 2021. The project is being implemented by 16 partner institutions from 8 European countries.

FORTEe promotes exercise in oncology with digital, innovative technologies such as augmented reality to make exercise training more effective, age-adapted and personalised. FORTEe will stimulate translational research to provide access to paediatric exercise oncology as a new health care intervention. As progress beyond the current state-of-the-art, FORTEe has the ambition to implement paediatric exercise in oncology as an evidence-based standard in clinical care for all childhood cancer patients across the EU and beyond.

Find more about FORTEe here

Website: www.fortee-project.eu

EU-CAYAS-NET

The EU-funded project “EU-CAYAS-NET” will develop a “European Youth Cancer Survivors Network” alongside an interactive virtual platform. The network will foster social networking, peer-support, knowledge-exchange, and aims at improving:

● the quality of life of survivors (including mental health, education & career support, follow-up care and transition)
● the care for adolescents and young adults (AYA) with cancer
● Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) along the whole treatment and survivorship trajectory.

The activities of the project include peer visits, meetings, training, virtual coworking, social media campaigns, webinars, policy recommendations and national and international events.

Youth Cancer Europe is responsible for Quality Assurance throughout the project as well as leading the work on AYA Care in Work Package 4, ensuring the development of the peer visit methodology and training materials, as well as organisation of the “Peer Visit as research method in EU-CAYAS-NET’” training session in Brussels and the Peer Visits in Belgium, the Netherlands, and Italy.

YCE will also lead WP5 on Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion (EDI) and will focus on improving health and the quality of life outcomes in minority groups by conducting a Desktop Research and Outreach programme. This investigation will contribute to the Equality, Diversity, and Inclusion toolkit that will be delivered to clinicians, patient organisations, and researchers in a later part of the project, through targeted training modules.

In 2024 YCE is responsible for several large events for EU-CAYAS-NET.

Duration: Sept 2022 – June 2025

Website: www.beatcancer.eu

SUNRISE

The EU-funded SUNRISE project is focused on the prevention of harmful behaviours during adolescence, which lead to cancer and represent a major health and social challenge in Europe.

By introducing a digitally enhanced life-skills programme, tailored to diverse socio-economic, cultural, and environmental backgrounds, SUNRISE integrates evidence-based smoking prevention tools with innovative approaches like peer social media campaigns, advertising literacy training, educational games, social robots and conversational assistants. Developed through schools-as-living-labs collaboration with educators, adolescents, parents, and experts, the programme will be implemented across 154 schools and 7 500 students in eight countries. 

Youth Cancer Europe is responsible for co-creating a school-based program to prevent cancer through sustainable health behaviour. YCE will lead two workshops to identify, analyse, and prioritise adolescent health risks, map relevant actors and ensure the inclusion of vulnerable groups, including ethnic minorities and migrants. Additionally, YCE will support the design and implementation of an online survey with 500 participants – including adolescents, parents, and educators- to assess the digital tool needs across various countries. Youth Cancer Europe will also contribute to developing the strategy for policy recommendations related to school-based cancer prevention and public health advocacy, and support the project’s communication and dissemination strategy targeting schools, policymakers, patient communities, and the general public, ensuring broad reach and lasting impact.

Website: https://thesunriseproject.eu/

E-QuoL

The E-QuoL project provides children, adolescents, and young adults who have experienced cancer with e-health tools specifically designed with and for them to help manage their health. The overall goal of E-QuoL is to promote equality in quality of life for young people living with and beyond cancer across Europe by understanding their needs, as well as those of their families and caregivers, creating and enhancing e-health tools for them, and evaluating the effectiveness of these tools once implemented.

As an Associated Partner, Youth Cancer Europe will maximise the project’s visibility and impact by sharing the project’s results with different target groups, such as patient advocates, healthcare professionals, policymakers, researchers, and patient communities, who can use the project’s findings to improve support for people living with and beyond cancer.
The Little People, a Romanian association supporting children affected by cancer and the founder of Youth Cancer Europe, is one of the beneficiaries of this project and coordinates the working group that identifies and addresses potential social challenges such as accessibility, inclusion, and stigmatisation.

Website: https://equolproject.eu/

MELODIC

MELODIC addresses the mental health challenges experienced by young people living with and beyond cancer across Europe, along with the challenges faced by their families and caregivers. The project will focus on improving healthcare providers’ skills in screening, early detection, and management of the mental health needs of young adults with cancer, as well as their families and caregivers. It will provide a more in-depth understanding of the mental health needs and pilot a new intervention aimed to support the mental well-being of young adults and their families and caregivers. 

Youth Cancer Europe will plan and organise a series of webinars focused on mental health and self-care, recruit patient advocates, and facilitate patient participation in the Advisory Board. This will empower young people living with and beyond cancer across Europe, helping them develop skills to shape healthcare into a more person-centred system. Additionally, YCE will create a plan for MELODIC to promote equity, diversity, and inclusion through targeted actions while ensuring that patient experiences and perspectives are fully recognised and considered.

Website: coming soon

STRONG-AYA

STRONG-AYA: Improving the Future of Young Adults with Cancer receives 10 million euros in research funds from Horizon Europe and UKRI (UK Research and Innovation). The 60-month project started in October 2022, uniting 14 partner organisations from the Netherlands, Romania, United Kingdom, Italy, France, Belgium and Poland.

STRONG-AYA is a new, interdisciplinary, multi-stakeholder European network aiming to improve healthcare services, research and outcomes for Adolescents and Young Adults (AYA) with cancer aged 15-39 years at cancer diagnosis.

The specific objectives of the project include: (1) Development of a Core Outcome Set (COS) for AYAs with cancer; 2) Implementation of the COS in five national healthcare systems (France, Italy, Netherlands, United Kingdom, Poland) and establishment of national infrastructures for outcome data management and clinical decision-making and a pan-European ecosystem; 3) Disseminate outcomes and facilitate interactions between national and pan-European stakeholders to develop data-driven analysis tools to process and present relevant outcomes, establish feedback loops for AYA cancer patients and the healthcare systems, and improve the reporting and assessment of outputs towards policy-makers.

Website: https://strongaya.eu

smartCARE

smartCARE: Improving Cancer Survivors’ Quality of Life is a 24-month project funded under the EU4Health programme 2021-2027 which brings together 41 partners.

The project aims at developing a ‘Cancer Survivor Smart Card’, to improve the quality of life and health status of cancer survivors. This digital tool will take the form of a mobile application, embracing the core attributes of patient-centred care.

The Smart Card will facilitate patient empowerment, allowing survivors to have an easy access to their treatment summary, being able to share it with relatives and professionals but also having access to a broad range of resources and functionalities enhancing quality of life.

Website: coming soon

PROTECT-EUROPE

PROTECT-EUROPE: Vaccinating Europe to protect against cancers caused by HPV is funded under the EU4Health programme 2021-2027. The project is a 24-month-long initiative and is being implemented by the Protecting Europe consortium, which reunites 34 organisations from 17 countries and a wide range of backgrounds, including oncology, general practice, pharmacy, nursing, patients, young people, public health etc. 

The overarching aim of PROTECT-EUROPE is to address the need for a national gender-neutral vaccination programme in EU Member States to grant levels of protection for everyone against the cancers caused by HPV. This will be achieved through the provision of expertise, best practices and guidelines covering the planning and roll-out of vaccination campaigns.

Website: coming soon

ONCOSCREEN

A European “shield” against colorectal cancer based on novel, more precise and
affordable risk-based screening methods and viable policy pathways has received funding amounting
to more than 12.9 million € under the EU’s HORIZON Research and Innovations Actions (RIA). The
project is a 48-month duration initiative and is being implemented by a multidisciplinary consortium of
38 partners, including technical solutions providers, hospitals, Ministries of Health, legal and ethics
experts, and Insurance companies, also actively involving end-users/citizens in all its phases of
implementation. ONCOSCREEN develops a risk-based, population-level stratification methodology for
colorectal cancer (CRC), to account for genetic prevalence, socio-economic status, and other factors.
Within the project, this methodology is complemented by developing a set of novel, practical, and low-
cost screening technologies with high sensitivity and specificity, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI) to
improve existing methodologies for CRC screening and providing a mobile app for self-monitoring and
CRC awareness raising. Furthermore, ONCOSCREEN develops an Intelligent Analytics dashboard for
policymakers, facilitating effective policy-making at regional and national levels. Through a multi-level
campaign, the above-mentioned solutions are tested and validated. For the clinical solutions, a clinical
validation study has been planned, with the participation of 4100 enrolled patients/citizens. To ensure
the adoption of the developed solutions by the healthcare systems, their cost-effectiveness and financial
viability will be assessed.

Website: https://oncoscreen.health/

ONCODIR

Stemming from the specific risk factors identified with colorectal cancer (CRC), ONCODIR: Evidence-
based Participatory Decision Making for Cancer Prevention through implementation research project
integrates multidisciplinary research methods from health policy analytics, social and behavioural
science, artificial intelligence (AI) – powered multi-omics and retrospective data analytics, as well as
decision support theories to deliver evidence-based cancer prevention programmes and innovative AI-
powered personalised prevention approaches. The coherent technological ecosystem that ONCODIR is
developing is based on robust AI trustworthiness and privacy preserving principles to deploy
recommendation services that will be specified by citizens, health policy actors and Social Sciences and
Humanities (SSH) experts, during three design thinking workshops. SSH research will address aspects
such as the life-status, nutritional and social habits in tandem with Economics, Sociology and
Local/Regional Cultural Identity and Ethics. ONCODIR’s results will be validated in three Laboratory
Integration Tests (LITs) and three Large-scale Intervention Pilots (LIPs) in five EU member states, with
the active involvement of medical scientists, health care providers, foundations, and consortium
experts.

Website: oncodir.eu