Count Us In: Data, Dignity & Disruption in Global Cancer Equity
During the 2025 Global CRC Congress, we heard a consistent, undeniable truth: when patients are uncounted, they are excluded: excluded from statistics, from resources, from research, and from the very systems built to save them. We have diagnosed the problem. We have seen the disruptive solutions. Now, we move from insight to action.
The Count Us In Pact
Our Collective Pledge:
We commit to championing and working towards a future where:
- No Patient is Invisible: We will advocate for and help build inclusive cancer surveillance systems that extend beyond pathology-based data to count every patient, everywhere.
- Data Drives Equity: We will use accurate, representative data as the non-negotiable foundation for all cancer control plans, research agendas, and resource allocation, ensuring that funding and policy follow need.
- Collaboration is Our Default: We will break down silos, fostering partnerships between registries, patient advocates, clinicians, researchers, and industry to create a unified, global response.
- We Close the Gap: We will measure our success not by publications, but by the narrowing of the cancer equity gap and the tangible improvement in outcomes for the most marginalized communities.
My personal commitment to advancing the pact is to amplify this message by sharing the 'Count Us In' Pact with colleagues in my network, to initiate a conversation within my organization to audit our own data collection practices for equity, or to directly support one initiative, with time, resources, or expertise, that is building cancer data capacity in an under-resourced region.
We are the disruption. We are the Count Us In generation.