The International Society of Paediatric Oncology (SIOP) is a founding member of the newly formed Global Alliance for Cancer Patient Navigation, an initiative convened by the American Cancer Society to make patient navigation a standard, sustainable part of cancer care worldwide. The Alliance’s first major output, a commentary titled “Patient navigation as a core component of global cancer care—A call to action from the Global Alliance for Cancer Patient Navigation,” was published in the journal Cancer in 2026, with SIOP’s Courtney E. Sullivan among the co-authors representing the Society.
What is patient navigation, and why it matters for children with cancer
Patient navigation is an individualized service designed to break down the practical, financial, and informational barriers that keep people from receiving timely, comprehensive cancer care. The concept traces back to 1990, when American Cancer Society President Dr. Harold Freeman piloted a navigation model for low-income breast cancer patients at Harlem Hospital. Since then, navigation programs have spread across high-income countries and, increasingly, low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) — but largely without coordinated global standards, consistent role definitions, or sustainable funding models.
That gap is especially consequential in pediatric oncology. Most of the projected global rise in cancer incidence will occur in LMICs, where delays in diagnosis and referral, limited comprehensive care services, and high financial toxicity already contribute to poor survival for children with cancer. The commentary specifically calls out pediatric and geriatric patients, alongside rural, indigenous, and other underserved populations, as groups that must be deliberately targeted by navigation programs rather than served incidentally.
A three-year plan, with a dedicated pediatric oncology working group
Formed in 2025, the Alliance now includes more than 60 member organizations from across the world, spanning patient advocacy groups, on-the-ground implementation partners, academic institutions, and multinational nongovernmental organizations. Its three-year aim is to convene these diverse voices to co-create and scale patient navigation solutions that work across varied healthcare settings, organized through an overarching community of practice and three working groups focused respectively on high-income countries, LMICs, and pediatric oncology.
To guide this work, the Alliance’s membership developed ten core principles through an iterative, consensus-based process. Among them: patient navigation should be universally available and written into national cancer control plans; it should span the full cancer care continuum, from screening through survivorship and palliative care; it should specifically target disenfranchised populations, including pediatric patients; and navigators — clinical and nonclinical alike — deserve clearly defined roles, training standards, and remuneration to make programs sustainable.
What the evidence shows
Drawing on a systematic review conducted through the Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer’s Global Initiative to Advance Cancer Navigation for Better Outcomes, the commentary summarizes where the evidence for patient navigation is strongest. Navigation shows strong evidence of improving cancer screening rates, reducing time to diagnosis, reducing hospital readmissions, improving adherence to survivorship surveillance, improving patients’ treatment knowledge and decision-making, and improving patient satisfaction and quality of life. Evidence is more limited or inconclusive for outcomes such as clinical trial enrollment, treatment completion, return to work, and emotional distress — areas the Alliance flags for further research, including in pediatric populations, where most existing data still comes from high-income settings.
A call to action
The commentary closes with an appeal to the global oncology community — policymakers, insurers, employers, and professional societies alike — to advocate for patient navigation as a universal component of cancer care packages, and to invest in the workforce, technology, and policy frameworks needed to make it sustainable at local, national, regional, and global levels.
For SIOP members, the formation of the Alliance’s dedicated pediatric oncology working group is a significant opportunity to ensure that navigation solutions are designed around the specific barriers facing children, adolescents, and their families, and to bring SIOP’s expertise to a genuinely global effort to close survival gaps in childhood cancer care.
The Global Alliance for Cancer Patient Navigation is supported by funding from Merck.
