CONICET scientist participated in the Handbooks of Cancer Prevention 2021 of the International Agency for Research on Cancer

Silvina Arrosi, principal researcher of the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET) at the Centro de Estudios de Estado y Sociedad (CEDES), participated in the Handbooks of Cancer Prevention 2021. The scientific reports were made by a team of 27 international scientific experts jointly with the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC). Silvina Arrosi is the only Argentine participant and from one Latin American institution (only two people belong to institutions from the Region).

The Handbooks on cancer prevention are scientific reports led by IARC in which interdisciplinary working teams of scientific experts review all the published scientific studies and evaluate the importance of the evidence that an agent or activity as cancer preventive.

As regards her participation, Arrosi said: “I feel very proud as a scientist to have been summoned and to be the only person from Argentina. Professionally speaking, it is a recognition for a collective study that was done in the country and that I had the opportunity to lead since I arrived as repatriated scientist in 2007, when we had the opportunity to carry out research work with a high level of solidity, which is model and evidence that is taken into account for the generation of public policies worldwide.

The first step in cancer prevention is the identification of the cause and what works in terms of prevention. According to its fundamental mission, the IARC prepares and distributes authorized information on the causes and prevention of cancer globally.

Released in 1995, the Handbooks are intended to complement the IARC Monographs series. Each volume is produced by an international team of experts and was relaunched in 2014 with a reassessment of breast cancer screening.

In the 2021 edition, the team made up of 27 international scientists with the IARC jointly reviewed all the available scientific evidence about the effectiveness of the different screening methods to prevent cervical cancer (Papanicolau, HPV test, Visual inspection with acetic acid). The result constitutes the international reference evidence for cervical cancer prevention, and a synthesis of its results was published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Silvina Arrosi worked for the Screening Group of the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC-WHO, France) between 1999 and 2007. She focused her work on social determinants of women’s participation in screening programs. She returned to Buenos Aires in 2007 with a CONICET reintegration fellowship within the framework of the Scientists Repatriation Program. She led the National Cervical Cancer Prevention Program of the National Cancer institute and is currently a member of the Scientific Committee of the Program and has done consultancy work for different United Nations Organizations – WHO-, IARC, Habitat, PAHO). Currently, she is collaborating with the WHO in the preparation of the Proposal for the Elimination of Cervical Cancer; and is a Member of the Regional Advisory Board for Latin America of the American Association for Research on Cancer (AACR), and of the Advisory Board of the “Initiative for a global data repository on Cancer Screening in 5 Continents (CanScreen5)”, IARC-France.