NHMRC Investigator Grant success for Prof Anne Cust
The Daffodil Centre’s Deputy Director, Professor Anne Cust, was awarded a $2 million grant from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) to build evidence on tailored approaches to improve prevention and early detection of melanoma and other skin cancers.
Sydney Cancer Conference 2021
The Daffodil Centre was proud to be part of the seventh Sydney Cancer Conference, held online this month. Hosted by the University of Sydney, the annual conference is a forum showcasing existing and emerging strengths in cancer research across Australia. Researchers from the Daffodil Centre were featured across the two-day program, and the centre also contributed as a prize sponsor.
Professor Karen Canfell, Professor Anna deFazio, Professor Anne Cust and Professor Kate White were featured among the invited speakers, plenary panels and session Chairs.
Researchers and students Dr Julia Steinberg, Dr Jie-Bin Lew, Dr Deanne Jenkin and Elvin Cheng presented their work in the oral sessions. Dr Peter Sarich, Dr Lara Petelin, Dr Yoon-Jung Kang, Dr Pietro Procopio and Dr Yuan Ni presented work as posters and mini-orals.
Australian Public Health Conference 2021
A/Prof Carolyn Nickson, Dr Jie-Bin Lew and Dr Joachim Worthington gave oral presentations at the online Australian Public Health Conference. Convened annually by the Australian Public Health Association, this year’s theme was ‘Supporting and Re-energising Public Health in a Disrupted World.’
A/Prof Carolyn Nickson and Daffodil Centre collaborators were awarded the Public Health Research Award for their presentation titled Impact of COVID-19 disruption to Australia’s National Cancer screening programs. This work summarised the results of major collaboration across several Daffodil Centre streams, which supported our prior commissioned reports to government about the potential impact of disruptions to each of Australia’s cancer screening programs – BreastScreen, the National Cervical Screening Program and the National Bowel Cancer Screening Program. The research team included A/Prof Megan Smith, Dr Eleonora Feletto, Dr Sabine Deij, Paul Grogan, Dr Emily He, Michaela Hall, Dr Jie-Bin Lew, Dr Pietro Procopio, Dr Kate Simms, Dr Joachim Worthington, Dr Louiza Velentzis, Dr Lara Petelin and Professor Karen Canfell.
Highly cited papers
Two papers led by researchers now at the Daffodil Centre are among PLOS ONE’s top 10% most cited papers published in 2018.
Health services costs for cancer care in Australia: Estimates from the 45 and Up Study
David Goldsbury, Sarsha Yap, Dr Marianne Weber, Professor Karen Canfell, and Professor Dianne O’Connell were authors on this paper which generated population-based estimates of the health system costs of cancer care, and found considerable variation by cancer type and time since diagnosis. This paper is part of our ongoing program of work to characterise the costs associated with cancer in Australia.
Anal cancer in high-income countries: Increasing burden of disease
Dr Yoon-Jung Kang, Associate Professor Megan Smith and Professor Karen Canfell authored this paper which concluded that there has been a significant increase in rates of anal cancer in high-income countries, including Australia, since the late 1980s, particularly in those aged under 60.
Selection of recent publications
- Impact of personal genomic risk information on melanoma prevention behaviours and psychological outcomes: a randomized controlled trial
- The design, implementation, and effectiveness of intervention strategies aimed at improving genetic referral practices: a systematic review of the literature
- The road to cervical cancer elimination in Malaysia: Evaluation of the impact and cost-effectiveness of HPV screening with self-collection and digital registry support
- Facilitating uptake of cervical screening among Indigenous women to achieve equitable and timely elimination of cervical cancer
- Self-collection for HPV screening: a game changer in the elimination of cervical cancer
- The impact of HPV vaccination beyond cancer prevention: effect on pregnancy outcomes
