Speaking at the Community Oncology Global Congress (COGC 2026), Foluke Sarimiye addressed a fundamental paradox of modern oncology: while precision medicine, genomics, and artificial intelligence advance rapidly, essential timely diagnosis and basic care remain out of reach for populations facing geographic and financial barriers.
In Plain English: The Clinical Takeaway
- Beyond Screening: Early detection initiatives fail if patients cannot access timely biopsies, pathology, and definitive treatment pathways.
- Intelligent Connectivity: Specialized tertiary cancer centers must actively link with local community health systems rather than operating in isolation.
- Outcome-Driven Equity: Healthcare delivery models should be measured by outcomes such as access, equity, quality, safety, patient experience, and quality of life rather than sheer activity volume.
Bridging the Gap Between Advanced Science and Patient Access
Oncology has experienced extraordinary scientific progress in recent years. Clinicians can now sequence tumors, identify molecular profiles, and offer molecularly targeted therapies. Yet, as Foluke Sarimiye, Consultant Radiation and Clinical Oncologist at University College Hospital in Ibadan, Nigeria, noted during her address at the Community Oncology Global Congress (COGC 2026), organized by OncoDaily, access to these innovations is failing to keep pace with scientific discovery.
The core tension lies in the physical and systemic separation between sophisticated cancer centers and the communities they serve. When patients must navigate complex tertiary healthcare systems entirely on their own, geographic distance and financial strain often create insurmountable barriers. Community oncology, therefore, functions as the critical bridge connecting advanced medical science with the populations who need it most.
Rather than viewing community oncology as a lesser form of care, it is an approach that connects specialist cancer expertise with the places where people actually live, work, raise families, and experience illness. This model spans the entire care continuum, encompassing prevention, screening confirmation, diagnostic pathology, active treatment, supportive survivorship, and palliative support.
Transforming the Full Cancer Continuum
A widespread misconception in public health is that community oncology begins and ends with cancer screening. While screening programs remain vital for early detection, a positive screening result represents only the first step in a complex medical journey. Without structural support to connect an abnormal finding to a timely biopsy and specialized pathology, screening alone cannot alter patient mortality rates.
Sarimiye emphasized that true community oncology coordinates every subsequent phase of care. When a patient receives an abnormal result—such as during cervical cancer screening—the local care pathway must seamlessly guide them toward confirmation, treatment execution, and emotional support. This requires leveraging task-sharing models and strengthening community-based health teams to extend specialist oversight without diluting clinical quality.
Furthermore, the framework distinguishes clearly between equality and equity in healthcare delivery. Equality provides every individual with identical services, ignoring baseline disparities. Equity recognizes that a patient residing two hours away from a major medical center faces structural hurdles that someone living five minutes away does not. Community oncology addresses this imbalance by actively taking care closer to vulnerable populations.
| Care Domain | Traditional Centralized Model | Integrated Community Oncology Model |
|---|---|---|
| Screening & Diagnosis | Patient travels to tertiary center; siloed screening | Local screening linked directly to timely biopsy and pathology |
| Specialist Expertise | Confined strictly to major urban academic hospitals | Extended via intelligent connectivity to local facilities |
| Performance Metrics | Volume of activities delivered | Outcomes measuring access, equity, quality, safety, patient experience, and quality of life |
Achieving Intelligent Connectivity in Regional Healthcare
The future of cancer care depends on moving past the false dichotomy between fully centralized and entirely decentralized services. Highly specialized interventions will always require dedicated tertiary centers equipped with specialized multidisciplinary teams.
However, these tertiary institutions must maintain continuous, intelligent connectivity with surrounding primary care networks and local facilities. By integrating regional clinics with specialist expertise, health systems can ensure that patients in underserved and rural areas receive standardized, high-quality interventions. Evaluating these community-integrated models requires looking beyond simple activity counts to measure true outcomes: access, equity, quality, safety, and patient experience.
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