UICC’s Global Strategy Review to Enhance the Future of Cancer Care

Client: UICC

Service: Strategy

Industry: Public

As the world continues to become more connected, it is increasingly important for organisations to have a global perspective. This is especially true for non-profit organisations like UICC, which have stakeholders across the world. Our team at ADC Denmark helped UICC develop and review their global strategy to highlight the international perspectives of their members and stakeholders. Through this process, we gained valuable insights into the challenges and trends impacting the global cancer community and worked with UICC to develop concrete actions to address these issues.

The Challenge

The Union for International Cancer Control (UICC) is a global NGO committed to ensuring that cancer control remains a priority on the world health and development agenda. With a vision that no-one dies from a preventable cancer and that all cancer patients have access to quality treatment and care, UICC has developed a strategy with defined focus areas for the coming years.

As the international cancer landscape evolves rapidly, UICC reviews its strategy every four years to ensure that it aligns with current developments. To this end, they sought the help of our team at ADC Denmark to conduct their 2022 strategy review. Our goal was to support UICC in aligning its global strategy with the current state of the international cancer landscape towards 2035 and beyond.

The Approach

We approached the UICC strategy review by accounting for both internal and external perspectives. Firstly, we interviewed internal employees across different departments, as well as stakeholders in various management roles. Furthermore, we conducted a survey with UICC members to ensure that everyone had an opportunity to provide feedback on what they believed was important for the organisation’s future.

Secondly, we interviewed other international cancer organisations to learn about global developments that UICC should consider in their strategy. We also spoke with their partners, including pharma businesses and other funders. These interviews helped us consider multiple perspectives that account for UICC’s members in every continent.

Finally, we gathered the management team, strategy task force, and Board of Directors at the UICC head office in Geneva. We presented the tendencies to them and facilitated different workshop sessions. They then worked in groups to discuss the top trends, providing concrete working points for UICC’s upper management to address. Overall, we were able to prioritise and nuance these insights, resulting in a final report that captured the key discussions and takeaways.

The Solution

The final deliverable included a presentation highlighting the most important trends and tendencies, which we presented to UICC. These included the impact of the data revolution, the potential of innovation, and the growing demand for equal access to care. The insights were designed to advise the development of the organisation’s cancer strategy, providing valuable guidance for UICC’s members and stakeholders. Overall, the success of the project can be seen in the fact that UICC was able to incorporate the insights into their strategy, indicating the value and relevance of our approach.

”I believe that ADC Denmark (previously DAMVAD Analytics) has done a terrific job. They quickly understood the complexities of the UICC organisation, and its structure with members and partners. They have conducted themselves perfectly – really leaving us with great input for our future endeavours.
Cary Adams (CEO, UICC)

Impact on UICC

The insights gathered helped UICC gain a better understanding of the challenges and opportunities it faces and how to best navigate them. By implementing the recommendations presented in the workshop, UICC can strengthen its position as a leader in the cancer community and have a greater impact on the lives of people affected by cancer around the world. Among the recommended focus areas are the need to formulate a broader collaborative strategy, focus on technologies and data, improve education and awareness, and get cancer care on political agendas.

Learnings

Working with a client that has global interests requires aligning biases and communication, and consistently ensuring insights are relevant beyond one region. By representing all regions, we were able to facilitate a productive dialogue in bringing stakeholders together. Overall, their openness and responsiveness to our recommendations were crucial to the success of the project.

Other non-profit organisations can learn from UICC’s approach of prioritising their members in their strategy review. Additionally, organisations should not solely rely on members to give feedback directly as they may not be comfortable being completely honest. Therefore, it is essential to have an external stakeholder perform interviews to identify the problems that members in each location or segment are experiencing. This approach ensures that organisations take all aspects into account in their daily work.