SOLACE marks 1-year anniversary with key meeting in Madrid

The second SOLACE Consortium and Steering Committee meeting was successfully concluded at the beginning of April. The meeting marked one-year since the launch of the project and brought together  the project’s consortium members, external experts and key stakeholders.

The meeting was organised by Dr. Carlos Almonacid Sánchez (Sociedad Española de Neumología y Cirugía Torácica), Dr. Luis Seijo, from Clínica Universidad de Navarra, in Spain, as well as Dr. Fátima Matute Teresa, Regional Minister of Health of the Community of Madrid, who gave an inspiring opening speech about the importance of prevention and congratulated the SOLACE team on working on such an important cause.

During the two-day meeting, the leaders of each work package gave updates on their achievements from year one and informed on their future steps. External experts and stakeholders also provided critical feedback on the milestones and developments of the project.

Over the last year, SOLACE has achieved several key milestones:

• Conducted a survey gathering information on lung cancer screening perceptions and practices in Europe.
• Formed expert writing committees, comprising of specialists from consortium partners and external experts were formed, to produce new evidence-based guidelines on lung cancer screening.
• Beginning recruitment of women for the first SOLACE pilot project, which will take place in 11 European countries.
• Recruitment of hard-to-reach citizens, such as socio-economically deprived people, ethnic minority groups and people living in remote areas for the second SOLACE pilot project.
• Recruitment of current or ex-smokers – with chronic lung diseases, cancer survivors, and those who have undergone organ transplant, for the third SOLACE pilot project.
• On-going communication and dissemination of the projects outcomes and aims to ensure a wide audience are aware of the project’s achievements to date.

The focus of the consortium for the upcoming year will include:

• Expanding SOLACE networks of radiologists and national societies.
• Have more webinars on topics such as legal framework and epidemiology.
• Further interaction with the projects TOGAS and PRAISE-U.
• Be more in contact with Ministries of Health to promote the project.
• Optimising funding.
• Further develop tools for people to deliver screenings in other countries.
• Optimising the project’s outreach and communication activities.

The SOLACE project has high ambitions for lung cancer screening and is focused on reaching  underrepresented groups in multiple countries. This meeting fuelled the will and commitment of project members towards the stated objectives and provided great feedback and guidance for enriching  the future plan of action.