We collaborate with organisations across the world to advance research and develop policies on cancer prevention.
Working together with other organisations helps us to do more research, share our cancer prevention science with a broader audience and encourage governments to implement policies that make a bigger difference.
Cancer Australia
Since 2020, we have partnered with Cancer Australia to co-fund vital cancer prevention research in Australia. The opportunity for researchers to be funded by both World Cancer Research Fund International and the Australian government, through Cancer Australia, will be available to applicants based in Australia who are investigating the role of diet, nutrition (including body composition) and physical activity in primary cancer prevention.
> Read more about this partnership
The Cancer and Nutrition NIHR infrastructure Collaboration was initiated in 2014 and is coordinated by the NIHR Southampton Biomedical Research Centre. The main aim of this collaboration is to bring together a range of interdisciplinary stakeholders to bring coherence to existing activities and provide a coordinated framework for future research into nutrition and cancer.
The Collaboration is facilitated by the NIHR Office for Clinical Research Infrastructure and World Cancer Research Fund in the UK. The latest report details the work to date, including results from a patient experience survey, a survey of clinicians, and a mapping of cancer and nutrition research in the UK from the previous 5 years.
Within the Institute’s Food Policy Division, the Policy and Public Affairs team at World Cancer Research Fund International engage with the WHO Collaborating Centre for Population Salt Reduction on our work to reduce salt consumption.
The Center, which is part of the Bloomberg School of Public Health at Johns Hopkins University, uses a unique systems approach to preventing obesity by concurrently studying the many causes of the obesity epidemic. We work with the Center to exchange knowledge; link science to policy and action; and maximise our impact on government policies to reduce non-communicable diseases worldwide.
We are a member of the Coalition: an alliance of civil society organisations established to combat chronic diseases and their associated risk factors among people in the Caribbean. We share information and best practice to jointly influence and create effective methods for reducing the burden of non-communicable diseases in the region.
The current president of the Coalition, Prof Sir Trevor Hassell from Barbados, is also a member of our Policy Advisory Group in an individual capacity.
We are a member of ICONIC, which is a task force of the International Union of Nutritional Sciences. The task force aspires to build collaborations between the responsible bodies involved in nutrition and cancer at international level, with the ambition of adding value by bringing leadership, coherence and focus to existing activities, and stimulating new ones.
Our collaboration with IARC recognises our authority in the area of diet, nutrition, physical activity and cancer, and ensures that we remain at the forefront of international research. IARC shares with us the goal of producing evidence for cancer prevention and policy development in the areas of diet, nutrition and physical activity. Through our grant programme, we fund IARC to carry out research; for example to produce worldwide estimates on the extent to which cancer is linked to excess body fat.
We are also in the steering committee of IARC’s Cancer Prevention Europe (CPE) – a consortium of organisations across Europe with the aim of strengthening cancer prevention by increasing awareness of the needs, associated required resources and reducing inequalities in access to cancer prevention. We continue our contribution to the work of CPE by providing intellectual input in their activities.
In addition, we have partnered with IARC for the World Code Against Cancer. IARC is revising the European Code Against Cancer on behalf of the European Commission – our work forms the basis of the diet, obesity and physical activity component, and we are part of the coordination group while contributing to the lifestyle working group.
Dr Carolina Espina, from IARC’s Environment and Lifestyle Epidemiology Branch, is an observer on our Global Cancer Update Programme.
Many of our funded projects are being done by scientsits at IARC. You can see all these projects in our research database.
International Coalition for Advocacy on Nutrition (ICAN)
ICAN is a global coalition of more than 30 civil society organisations that work together to improve lives through better nutrition. In particular, ICAN seeks to achieve the WHO global nutrition and NCD targets by 2025, and Sustainable Development Goal 2.2 on ending all forms of malnutrition by 2030. We are a member of ICAN and our work with the coalition has included statements to WHO on tackling malnutrition in all its forms.
World Cancer Research Fund International has been working with Imperial – one of the world’s leading universities – since 2007. Researchers at Imperial work with us on our Global Cancer Update Programme. The research team at Imperial maintain a central database of papers on food, nutrition, physical activity and cancer, including cancer survivors, and prepare updated systematic literature reviews of the evidence as agreed with World Cancer Research Fund International, the American Institute for Cancer Research and a panel of leading independent experts from around the world. The Expert Panel makes the final judgement on the research. As part of our commitment to developing future leaders in nutritional epidemiology, we offer annual Fellowships to outstanding applicants for the International Course in Nutritional Epidemiology, organised by the School of Public Health at Imperial.
World Cancer Research Fund International was a founding member and part of a consortium of 16 funding partners committing up to £12m over 5 years to support the National Prevention Research Initiative, managed by the Medical Research Council. The focus is on behaviours associated with significant risks to health – such as poor diet, lack of physical activity and alcohol consumption – as well as environmental factors that influence those behaviours. The research aims to improve health and prevent chronic diseases including cancer.
NCD Alliance (NCDA) is an umbrella organisation uniting a network of more than 2,000 civil society organisations globally and works to combat the non-communicable diseases (NCD) epidemic by putting health at the centre of all policies. NCDA successfully entered official relations with the WHO at the 152nd Executive Board in February 2023. We are a member of NCDA and work closely with them in our advocacy work supporting global action on nutrition, NCDs and obesity. We worked with NCDA to ensure the development and implementation of WHO’s global policy architecture for NCDs – the international processes governing the approach to NCDs. We collaborate with NCDA on WHO consultations and statements on NCD matters.
UICC is a membership organisation that unites the global cancer community to accelerate the fight against cancer. We are a Benefactor partner of the UICC Championship programme and recognised as a Knowledge, Advocacy and Policy partner. Our partnership with UICC includes collaboration on scientific papers, global advocacy on cancer including on WHO statements and membership of the UICC global advocacy advisory group, as well as participation in the UICC World Cancer Leaders’ Summit and the biennial World Cancer Congress.
We are also members of the UICC Cancer Prevention Network, a platform to exchange knowledge on cancer prevention, and contribute to the International Cancer Control Partnership portal as well as seeking to raise awareness of cancer prevention through UICC’s World Cancer Day.
From 2008–14, we worked with Wageningen University in the Netherlands on research to increase our knowledge about primary and secondary colorectal cancer prevention and control. The project was funded by Wereld Kanker Onderzoek Fonds and conducted by a research team at Wageningen University. For much more on this collaboration, included published research, see our project page.
We have been in official relations with the WHO since 2016. This means that we work collaboratively with WHO to help people reduce their risk of developing non-communicable diseases, including cancer. We are seen as a trusted adviser to WHO, allowing us to influence public health policy at the highest level. We work with different departments at WHO including cancer control, nutrition and physical activity.
World Obesity is a federation of organisations dedicated to solving the problems of obesity. One of World Obesity’s initiatives is INFORMAS (International Network for Food and Obesity/NCDs Research, Monitoring and Action Support), a global network that aims to monitor, benchmark and support actions to create healthy food environments. It has also developed a Government Healthy Food Environment Policy Index to assess the extent of government policy implementation against international best practice. Our NOURISHING framework is consistent with and supports the work of INFORMAS.
If you work in the areas of government, civil society and policymaking, and would like to know more about what we aim to achieve in this area and how, read our policy strategy for 2021–24.
