Profile

ELLOK’s vision is for comprehensive, timely and affordable cancer care for all cancer patients, assuring excellent diagnosis, treatment, psycho-social support, and survivorship care including rehabilitation and reintegration to social life.

ELLOK’s mission is to advocate for cancer policy and research, joining forces with all our members and partners for the support of cancer patients’ individual and collective rights to healthcare, ensuring universal and unhindered access to cancer diagnosis, treatment, and care.

ELLOK works to:

• Make cancer a priority for action on the national and European health policy agenda

• Contribute to amending existing or introducing new legislative policies to improve cancer prevention, screening, treatment and care, rehabilitation and survivorship care, palliative, and end-of-life care

• Ensure that all cancer patients in Greece have access to timely and appropriate prevention, screening, early intervention, access to clinical trials, state of the art treatment and care.

• Empower and educate cancer patients to take an active role in their care and in shaping national and European healthcare policy that impacts on cancer prevention, treatment, and survivorship care

• Foster co-operation among ELLOK members and among similar European cancer patient organizations

• Acknowledge the growing number of cancer survivors, as a result of earlier cancer detection and intervention, better cancer care and therapies, call for research on survivorship issues and advocate for better healthcare and social services

• Foster networking, co-operation, exchange of best practices, cancer advocacy on European level with other similarly minded national cancer patient umbrella organizations

ELLOK’s strategy focuses on five main axes:
• Cancer and Health policies: influence the planning of cancer-related health policies

• Monitor the national legislative process and timely intervene with the patient’s perspective
• Organize cancer advocacy and awareness events
• Position papers on priority issues
• Awareness events on various cancer topics

• Cancer research: increase the involvement of cancer patients in cancer research as co-researchers

• ELLOK aims to contribute to the shift from evidence based to value-based cancer care by providing the patients’ perspective, preferences and needs in research projects
• ELLOK has participated in the SAB-Scientific Advisory of IASIS-Big Data for Precision Medicine project, in Cost action EU RADRESNET-Creating a European Network on Research and Education in Radiobiology, BioOnChip ERAperMED project, etc.. Our participation in research projects is still small, but our board and staff members have considerable EU funded projects experience and work towards increasing ELLOK’s participation in new Horizon Europe calls for expression of interest
• Key research areas of interest to ELLOK are indicatively precision oncology, genomics, biomarkers, survivorship, cross border health care, socio-economic aspects of cancer, palliative and end-of-life care, mobile telephony enabled cancer supportive care (mhealth), ehealth, use of BigData and Artificial Intelligence (AI) to inform cancer diagnosis and/or treatment, interoperability, HTA-health technology assessment

• Capacity building: empower and improve the skills of our members so that they can be involved in national health policymaking and improve the services offered to their members through:

• ELLOK Annual Congress, conferences, webinars, newsletters, white papers, patient guides
• Working Groups focusing on different types of cancer;
• Resources toolkit for patient organizations;

• Awareness-raising: raise awareness among society and the State about the challenges that cancer patients and their families face to ensure access to new treatments and state of the art, timely cancer care
• Governance: build a sound, transparent governance model. Strategic Partnerships with other patient advocacy groups, academia, scientific societies, research institutes, civil society strengthen our organization, enrich our knowledge, elevate the patient voice

The Board of Directors, elected in February 2017,  is as follows:

President:                             Kathi Apostolidis

Vice President:                    Ioanna Karavana

Secretary:                             George Kapetanakis

Treasurer:                              Angeliki Stefanaki

Board Member:                    Paraskevi Mihalopoulou

Board Member:                    Maria Theodoridou

Board Member:                    Eleni Nteliopoulou

The Annual General Assembly is the governing body of the Hellenic Cancer Federation. It is convened once a year and the members can evaluate the actions of the organization and to set objectives for the year to come.

The General Assembly is mandated by virtue of the Statutes to decide and implement the objectives of the organization and among others, its duties are the following:

-to draw up the budget

-to approve the Financial and the Annual Report of the Board of Directors

-to validate the results of the elections and to absolve the exiting Board of Directors of all responsibility

-to validate the legal statute and the internal regulation

-to hire an external certified auditor

-to approve applications for membership

The Board of Directors is elected every 3 years and consists of 7 members, most of which are individuals with personal cancer experience. The BoD implements the decisions of the General Assembly and accounts for its actions, by putting the everyday administration of the organization in action.

The Auditing Committee comprises 3 members with a 3-year term of office. They are responsible for controlling the management of the economic assets of the organization and the drafting of the Financial report to the General Assembly.

The Hellenic Cancer Federation strives to develop powerful strategic alliances with all members of the Greek and European oncology and research communities, by building bridges of communication and collaboration with all stakeholders.

We aim at empowering and equipping our members to better support cancer patients and more actively participate in cancer policy advocacy, and make Hellenic Cancer Federation the voice of cancer patients in our country.

At the European level, the Hellenic Cancer Federation is already member of the European Cancer Patient Coalition (ECPC), and as our President is the Vice President of the European Cancer Patient Coalition-ECPC, we have good exposure and information to European cancer policy developments. ECPC is the largest European cancer patient umbrella organization, with more than 400 patient advocacy groups as members in the European Union and beyond. ECPC works for the abolishment of inequalities in cancer care in Europe and believes that the patients are the most important associates in the fight against cancer. Main goal of ECPC is the European policy about health and cancer, cancer awareness campaigns, member training and participation in research programs.

During the last seven years of the financial crisis in Greece, the declining economy, unemployment and the deregulation of labour legislation have created a new socio-economic environment of uncertainty and anxiety. In this new context,  the conditions for providing cancer and in general, health care, have undergone significant change and degradation, creating new challenges for patient organisations.

To cope with these developments, cancer patient organisations decided in 2015 to legalize their so far informal collaboration, and have proceeded with the establishment of the Hellenic Cancer Federation – ELL.O.K.

We believe that if cancer patients, doctors, nurses, researchers, hospital administrators work together to foster and share knowledge, professional and individual experiences, facts, inspiration and vision, a lot of things can change.