Since 2024, the IARC Public Health Decision Science Team (PHDS) has established a Center of Excellence to monitor the impact of human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccination in low- and middle-income countries.

Drawing on the PHDS team members’ extensive experience in epidemiological studies developed over the past 20 years, they are on a mission to establish a Center of Excellence at IARC/WHO in collaboration with low- and middle-income countries. Local evidence is essential to inform context-specific cervical cancer control policies and to ensure the comparability of programmes across countries and populations.

The CHRONOS Center of Excellence aims to develop standardized methods, materials, and tools for conducting HPV prevalence surveys and to share the knowledge with partner institutions worldwide. E-learning resources and teaching toolkits are being developed to help local teams plan, prepare, conduct, monitor, and analyse HPV vaccination impact studies in women, with precision and consistency.

The results from these studies will inform local public health leaders with vital evidence on the impact of HPV vaccination, driving progress towards the elimination of cervical cancer.