The EU-funded 4P-CAN project seeks to gain a comprehensive understanding of the complex factors influencing cancer risk at the national, community, and individual levels. 

Project description

With a strong belief that primary prevention of cancer represents a collective responsibility (citizens, professionals, decision-makers), during a 4 year period, 4P-CAN builds on an innovative vision to understand the complex system that surrounds the citizen, the person, and how it increases the risk for cancer on three major levels – macro (at the national level), meso/mezzo (at the community level) and micro (at the individual level).

Following the European Code Against Cancer recommendations as a narrative reference and combining implementation research (including economic sciences), social sciences and humanities (SSH), together with behavioral sciences, and innovative technological approaches, 4P-CAN ultimately delivers new personalized tools for primary prevention of cancer in Central and Eastern European countries from the consortium. The co-created knowledge is then used to personalize the primary prevention interventions through Living-labs and implement personalized communication campaigns on cancer prevention.  

The project will focus on some of the main modifiable risk factors for cancer occurrence:

• smoking
• alcohol consumption
• physical inactivity
• excess body weight (overweight and obesity)
• HPV and HBV infections preventable through vaccination
• environmental pollution (including radon)  

The project will equally focus on trying to understand the barriers in front of the policy implementation and individual adherence to healthy behaviors in countries from Eastern Europe (Romania, Bulgaria, Republic of Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro, Ukraine), to improve as a consequence the primary prevention activities and reduce the inequalities.

Altogether, 17 organizations from 11 different countries are getting together to achieve these goals, i.e. Balkan countries (EU Member States and non-EU Member States), part of CEE: Romania, Bulgaria, North Macedonia, Montenegro; Republic of Moldova and Ukraine; and Western EU countries (Portugal, Italy, France, Ireland, Belgium).  This action is part of the Cancer Mission cluster of projects  on ‘Prevention and early detection’.