From Epidemiology to Implementation for Cancer Control in Sub-Saharan Africa: When One Size Does Not Fit All

Rutgers Global Health Institute is hosting a guest faculty seminar at 11 a.m. on Wednesday, December 21, 2022, as part of its Viewpoints in Global Health Research: Guest Faculty Seminar Series.

This online seminar will be presented by:

Tara Friebel-Klingner
Johns Hopkins University, Bloomberg School of Public Health

From Epidemiology to Implementation for Cancer Control in Sub-Saharan Africa: When One Size Does Not Fit All
Cervical and breast cancer are two of the most common cancers worldwide, with countries in sub-Saharan Africa having a disproportionately higher burden of mortality. In the past few decades, breast and cervical cancer mortality rates have decreased in high-income countries, but during the same time, breast and cervical cancer mortality rates in sub-Saharan Africa have dramatically increased. This high mortality is due to advanced stage at presentation and can be attributed, in part, to delayed diagnosis and treatment.

Evidence-based interventions, specifically cancer prevention, screening, and early detection, are recognized as the most effective approaches for cancer control and are associated with reduced cancer incidence and mortality. Although many evidence-based interventions for cancer control are proven efficacious, contextual relevance is often underappreciated. Contextual factors, when embedded in implementation science research, integrate multiple methodologies and evaluation frameworks into a systems-thinking process that continually adapts to the local context and promotes flexibility, acceptability, and sustainability. Conducting implementation science research will help successfully translate and accelerate implementation of evidence-based cancer control interventions to reduce the cancer burden and mortality in sub-Saharan Africa.

About the Presenter
Tara M. Friebel-Klingner is an epidemiologist whose research interests focus on cancer epidemiology and global health, specifically cancer prevention and early detection in low resource settings. Having recently received a Ph.D. degree in epidemiology from the University of Pennsylvania, Friebel-Klingner is currently a post-doctoral fellow in cancer epidemiology at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she is training in implementation science methods.

Friebel-Klingner previously worked in cancer epidemiology focused on high-risk BRCA1 and BRCA2 populations, examining risk factors and studying optimal breast and ovarian cancer prevention strategies. She also has worked with multiple large international consortia examining the global burden and genetic characteristics of cancer. Her recent work has focused on identifying demographic, clinical, and geographic features of cervical patients in Botswana and on improving breast cancer care pathways in Tanzania. She is driven by the knowledge that there are evidence-based interventions that are effective, appropriate, and inexpensive, yet not implemented to scale in many countries in sub-Saharan Africa. This disparity is contributing to the disproportionate number of cancer deaths and is her motivating factor for adapting mixed methods approaches to facilitate the implementation of evidence-based interventions in low resource settings.

Online via Zoom

Free and open to the public. For more information, contact Florencia Modernel. For more events, visit the seminar series page on the Rutgers Global Health Institute website or explore the institute’s full online calendar.