The provision of broad-based education and training in areas such as prevention and control is increasingly important as we face the challenges of providing appropriate and equitable health and social services in the 21st century. Under the auspices of the Ireland-Northern Ireland-National Cancer Institute Cancer Consortium, the National Cancer Institute (NCI) has partnered with Ireland and Northern Ireland since 2002 to develop research capacity for cancer prevention and control in Ireland. As part of this effort, NCI collaborates with the Health Research Board (HRB) and the Health and Social Care Research and Development (HSC R&D) Division annually to include participants from Ireland in the NCI Summer Curriculum in Cancer Prevention and the prestigious NCI Cancer Prevention Fellowship Program (CPFP). This internationally-renowned interdisciplinary postdoctoral training programme provides opportunities for individuals from a wide range of health-related disciplines to learn the principles and practices of cancer prevention and control. To be eligible, applicants must have a doctoral degree (MD, PhD, JD) and less than five years relevant postdoctoral experience. During November 2015, the HRB was informed that 10 candidates were being accepted onto this prestigious NCI programme and that one of the candidates was from Ireland. The candidate, Dr Susan Spillane, currently works as Senior Pharmacist and a member of the Pharmacoeconomic evaluation team at the National Centre for Pharmacoeconomics. She is also an adjunct assistant professor at the Department of Pharmacology & Therapeutics at TCD. In her role, Susan works on pharmacoeconomic evaluation of medicines under application for reimbursement under the state-funded pharmaceutical access schemes, analysis of state pharmaceutical claims data, and she is involved in a number of HTA projects. Susan’s key research interest is in screening and chemoprevention. In her application, she stated that she remains unclear whether she will be best placed in the long-term in academic or policy/practice work but she believes that her professional background in pharmacy combined with her postgraduate training in health services research, epidemiology and biostatics and combined with her pharmacoeconomics experience will ensure that she can make a strong contribution as a CPFP fellow and make a sustained and meaningful impact in the cancer prevention field in Ireland on her return.
