On Tuesday 22 of June DiCE in partnership with the European Commission and within the framework of the EU Health Policy Platform, held a webinar entitled: ‘Colorectal Cancer Screening: Lessons Learned from Covid-19’.

On behalf of Digestive Cancers Europe (DiCE), we wish to thank all the participants and the excellent speakers for their active engagement. We are pleased to announce that we had more than 130 registrations for the event, and we were happy to see that 90 of you were able to participate.

The exploration of how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected screening in Europe looked at how countries with well functioning screening programmes have managed throughout the pandemic. Generally, beyond the initial shock, these country examples – The Netherlands, Finland and Slovenia – have been able to catch up with their screening programmes through intensified efforts including close monitoring of screening registries. This offered best practice models that other countries can follow in similar future situations.

We were also pleased to see a great willingness among key stakeholders at regional, national and European level to continue the sharing of ideas in the framework of the DiCE led Stakeholder Network on Colorectal Cancer Screening, and we are determined to repeat the effort again in the future, hopefully in person.

It is also evident that we, as colorectal cancer patient organisations, together with other stakeholders, value all the work that is being done for patients to be detected at an early or even pre-cancerous stage. We believe that by uniting our common efforts much more can be done and many more lives can be saved.

We will soon share all presentations on the DiCE led Stakeholder Network on Colorectal Cancer Screening in the European Union, please sign up and become a member if you haven’t already: https://webgate.ec.europa.eu/hpf/network/home/87.

We will keep you informed on our future projects, including the second edition of our Screening Summit on November 30 this year, and welcome any suggestions you might have. For this please contact us.

Many thanks again for your contributions and support!