On 14 May 2026, All.Can International was in Budva, Montenegro, for a pivotal moment in the 4P-CAN project. The International Roundtable on Cancer Prevention and Inequalities, held on the opening morning of the III Congress of the Montenegrin Association of Medical Oncologists (CUMO), brought together researchers, public health experts, policymakers and civil society representatives from five consortium countries to work towards a joint regional declaration on reducing inequalities in cancer primary prevention.
Madalina Iamandei, All.Can International Executive Director, facilitated the two-hour session where each country delegation — from Romania (InoMed), the Republic of Moldova (DGAMS), North Macedonia (FEMINA M) and Bulgaria (Plovdiv University) — presented a focused ‘prevention spark’: one concrete, specific shift their country must make to close the cancer prevention gap. Montenegro’s own national Cancer Prevention and Control Programme, presented by CUMO, set the frame for the discussion.
The roundtable sits within the final phase of 4P-CAN, a European Union-funded research consortium of nineteen partners across six countries. Over the past three years, 4P-CAN has generated comparative evidence on cancer risk factors including smoking, alcohol consumption, physical inactivity, excess body weight and vaccine-preventable infections, alongside socioeconomic analyses, living lab findings and citizen surveys. The Budva roundtable marked the shift from evidence generation to regional commitment: the translation of that body of research into a joint declaration with direct relevance for national cancer strategies and EU-level policy dialogue.
The session’s second half focused on the draft regional declaration, co-developed across the consortium and built around three thematic pillars. Country delegations spoke from national experience; Montenegrin participants from health authorities, healthcare, social care and civil society grounded the discussion in local reality. The declaration will provide the policy foundation for 4P-CAN’s final conference in Brussels in 2027.
Cancer prevention inequalities in this region are not accidental. They reflect gaps in governance capacity, financing and political commitment. The Budva roundtable demonstrated what becomes possible when those gaps are named honestly, examined comparatively and addressed together. All.Can International is proud to contribute its facilitation expertise and multi-stakeholder perspective to this work.
About 4P-CAN
4P-CAN is co-funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe programme. It brings together nineteen partners from Romania, Bulgaria, the Republic of Moldova, North Macedonia, Montenegro and Ukraine to generate evidence on barriers to cancer primary prevention and support the design of context-sensitive policy responses. All.Can International is a consortium partner. Learn more at 4p-can.eu.