Prof. Beverley Essue was recently presented with a Connaught Research Challenge for Black Researchers Award for her work on strengthening financial protection in cancer care.
By: Marielle Boutin
A cancer diagnosis is a devastating blow resulting in both physical and emotional turmoil, leaving patients and their families to navigate the crippling aftermath.
An extension of this devastation is the financial burden that can accompany a diagnosis, attributable to high out-of-pocket costs, low income, and caregiver burnout, especially among rural and marginalized populations.
Associate Professor Beverley Essue hopes to address these inequities with the support of the Connaught Fund.
Prof. Essue was recently named a recipient of a Connaught Major Research Challenge for Black Researchers Award for her project “Leveraging Global Cancer Insights to Strengthen Financial Protection Research: A Community Practice Approach.”
Reflecting on the significance of this award, Prof. Essue says it is a recognition that financial protection for cancer reflects a deep health systems and equity issue.
“This award supports work that is potentially field‑building, affirming that collaboration and methodological leadership are innovations that are needed to shift from studying the problem to building the global architecture needed to solve it,” says Prof. Essue.
The project was born not only from a need for better financial protection, but also because research around cancer costs is fragmented across different countries and disciplines. Systems improvement is thus halted by siloed data, inconsistent research methods, and gaps in equity analysis.
The project will lay the groundwork to meet this challenge by establishing a global Community of Practice (CoP) to better align research methods, enable data and knowledge translation, and transform financial protection surrounding cancer treatment.
“I’ve worked on financial protection for cancer for over a decade and across diverse settings. I continue to encounter fragmented data, inconsistent metrics, and limited cross country exchange that slow collective progress,” says Prof. Essue. “This project aims to move the field from isolated studies to coordinated, harmonized methods that enable meaningful cross country learning, generate more credible policy guidance, use research investments more efficiently, and sharpen our ability to see who is being left behind. In doing so, it accelerates progress toward Universal Health Coverage and Sustainable Development Goals.”
At its foundation, the CoP will be built from several essential components, the first being a Virtual Knowledge Hub. This accessible platform will support collaboration and knowledge mobilization by offering access to a repository of cancer costs and financial protection data, a list of global data sources, research methods and equity measures, and training modules on how to quantify cancer costs and evaluate financial protection.
These activities will be built into and operate through the 3P Lab, an interdisciplinary hub advancing community-led health equity research, which Prof. Essue co-directs with Associate Professors Amaya Perez-Brumer and Angela Mashford-Pringle of the Dalla Lana School of Public Health.
Another central component of the CoP will be a Global Research Roundtable, bringing together researchers from different countries and disciplines to share innovations, identify gaps, develop coordinated efforts, and establish a training agenda.
According to Prof. Essue, by leveraging networks across fields like global oncology, health economics, and equity research, this model has the potential to enable more in-depth knowledge exchange efforts.
“This work will set the stage for a future phase that will aim to deepen engagement with decision-makers and community partners, ensuring the evidence produced aligns with real-world policy needs. We want to see researchers using shared frameworks and policymakers having clearer comparative data on financial protection at their disposal. We also hope financial protection will be seen as a core measure of cancer system performance, with equity analysis integrated throughout. All of this guided by a global network of scholars and trainees propelling the work forward.”
Ultimately, this project aims to reframe financial protection for cancer as a defining measure of whether health systems are working for the people they are meant to serve. By aligning methods, strengthening evidence, and building a sustained global network, it positions Canada at the forefront of equity-oriented cancer systems research. Most importantly, it advances a simple but urgent goal: that no family should face financial ruin for surviving cancer.
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Communications
Marielle Boutin
Email Address: ihpme.communications@utoronto.ca