Latest news with #preventiveHealth
CBC
6 days ago
- Health
- CBC
Major overhaul ordered for group that sets Canada's cancer screening guidelines
Social Sharing A major overhaul is expected of the national body that issues Canada's cancer screening guidelines. The changes were ordered by the federal health minister, following an external review of the Task Force on Preventive Health Care. The task force is an arm's-length panel set up by the federal government to publish national guidelines for family doctors, advising them on when to send their patients for routine screenings of various illnesses, including common cancers. But the panel has been criticized for years for failing to fully take in expert advice, using outdated research and being too slow to update its guidelines. Many of the task force's recommendations are over a decade old. "Those cancer screenings translate into survival," said Dr. Anna Wilkinson, an Ottawa family physician who helps care for cancer patients. "We know that technology and medical science changes so rapidly," she said. "We're not keeping pace and that's impacting people's health." The health minister suspended the task force's work last year and ordered the review, after it came under mounting scrutiny for continuing to recommend routine breast cancer screening only start at 50 years of age. That guideline flew in the face of evidence that screening should start at 40 — advice supported by the Canadian Cancer Society and already implemented in several provincial breast screening programs. The cancer most commonly diagnosed in Canadians aged 30 to 49 is now breast cancer. "We know that we're seeing more and more early-age onset of breast cancer," Wilkinson said. "We need to have guidelines that are in line with those changes." A 'pressing need' The review calls on the task force to be more accountable and transparent, streamline and speed up its guideline updates and ensure experts are consulted, citing a "pressing need to modernize its approach." The task force has been criticized for other recommendations, including cervical, prostate and lung cancer screening. Its guidelines on cervical cancer, for example, haven't been updated since 2013, and recommend against screening for HPV, the virus that causes cervical cancer. The U.K. and Australia replaced Pap tests with HPV screening in 2016 and 2017, respectively, because HPV can be detected much sooner. Wilkinson said she's hopeful the major changes to how the task force operates will save lives, especially since many primary care physicians are trained to use those guidelines when deciding to refer their patients for tests. Her own research found Canadian women who lived in provinces where breast cancer screening started at 40 had a better chance of surviving than those who were screened in their 50s. Early screening would have changed the life of Carolyn Holland. At 43, she discovered lumps in her breasts. By that point, the cancer had spread so aggressively that she needed chemotherapy, radiation and a double mastectomy. A mammogram could have caught her cancer sooner, but she had never had one. Her family physician was following the task force guidelines that said she didn't need a routine screening until 50. "Had my cancer been caught earlier with mammography at 40, my treatment and outcome would have been drastically different," Holland said. In a statement, the task force said it looks forward to helping bring about the changes, which will "bolster the task force's credibility," adding that its work is "internationally known for its rigorous evidence-based guidelines." "The recommendations in this report are not only about modernizing the approach but about ensuring that preventive health care remains responsive to evolving scientific evidence, inclusive of diverse perspectives, adaptable to real-world delivery settings and to local public health priorities," the statement reads.
CTV News
14-06-2025
- Health
- CTV News
‘A landmark decision': advocates celebrate reform of health screening task force
Women in their 40s in Ontario can now book a mammogram without needing a doctor's referral. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP-Kimberly P. Mitchell/Detroit Free Press via AP) Advocates and doctors are applauding the recently released external expert panel report on the Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which calls for modernization and reform of the task force. Some of the recommendations to modernize the task force include ensuring preventive health care remains up to date with evolving scientific data and applying it to guidelines in a timely manner, the inclusion of equity-centred perspectives, patient involvement, and collaboration with pre-existing guidelines to help eliminate disparities across the country. 'This is great news,' said Dr. Anna Wilkinson, a family physician and general practitioner-oncologist at The Ottawa Hospital, in a phone interview with 'They are saying that we need to modernize the task force, and I think that's because we're recognizing that we are kind of behind the times on our cancer screening guidelines and many of our other preventive health care guidelines.' Task force halted amid criticism The task force, which is responsible for developing preventive health guidelines like cancer screening across Canada, is an independent body that develops clinical guidelines for family doctors about screening and prevention measures for cancer and other diseases. The task force's work was halted last year following criticism of its proposed incoming breast cancer screening guidelines, which did not recommend mammography screening begin at age 40. Instead, it upheld its 2018 guidelines recommending screening begin at age 50, despite growing evidence and calls from numerous medical experts and organizations urging earlier screening in response to rising breast cancer rates among younger women. This prompted then-Health Minister Mark Holland to request that the Public Health Agency launch an external expert review panel, which began in October 2024, to recommend changes and improvements to the task force's structure, governance, and methodology for developing the guidelines. Dr. Wilkinson, one of the medical experts who advised the external review panel, says she is pleased the report acknowledges the need to modernize the task force. 'We cannot afford economically as a health system to not be,' she said. 'We know that it's so much cheaper to deal with cancers when they're smaller, we know the outcomes are better, the cost to our health-care system is better.' 'I think one of the ways forward for a health-care system is to do preventive care more effectively. (…) This is a high-level view of how we might do that, so I look forward to seeing how it gets implemented.' With implementation of the recommendations currently underway, Health Minister Marjorie Michel has requested that the Public Health Agency of Canada have the task force operational by April 2026. 'Landmark change' Kimberly Carson, CEO of Breast Cancer Canada, was one of many advocates calling for the incoming breast cancer guidelines to recommend screening begin at age 40 rather than 50. Carson, who met with Holland and the external expert review panel, is content with the report's findings. 'It's going to be fantastic for Canadians,' Carson told in a phone interview. 'We know that if we catch breast cancer early, it's better for the patient, it's better for the health-care system, it costs less, there's less financial toxicity for the patients and a better cure rate. (…) It changes the paradigm for Canadian patients.' The task force began meeting on the upcoming breast cancer guidelines in May 2023. For two years, Breast Cancer Canada advocated for the inclusion of subject matter experts in guideline development, the timely integration of the latest data, and the incorporation of patient perspectives. With the report acknowledging all these points, Carson says she is satisfied that the sustained mobilization efforts have yielded results. 'It's such a landmark change in a landmark decision,' Carson said. The Canadian Cancer Society, which also stated in a media release its approval of the report, also had its recommendations reflected in the findings. Some of these recommendations echo those of Breast Cancer Canada, including the inclusion of cancer experts, patient perspectives, and staying current with evolving perspectives, experiences and scientific evidence. 'Once they reform the task force and it becomes functional in April, we would hope that they would immediately take a look at the screening guidelines for breast cancer,' Carson added. In addition to the 2018 breast cancer guidelines, the current cancer screening guidelines for other cancers — like colon cancer (2016), prostate cancer (2014), and cervical cancer (2013) — are also due for updates, Dr. Wilkinson notes. She says this report is a 'critical step' towards modernizing all of Canada's screening guidelines. 'In today's strained health-care environment, optimizing preventive care is essential to making the most of our limited resources,' she said in an email to 'The integration of diverse and evolving evidence, equitable care and ongoing evaluation pave the way for agile, 'living' guidelines that keep pace with scientific advancements. 'This approach will help ensure Canada no longer relies on cancer screening recommendations that are over a decade old.'
