The Future of Global Radiation Oncology As Part of Accurate, Precision Cancer Medicine

Background: When global health and cancer care are discussed, it is usually in the context of underserved communities, inadequate resources, standards of care below that in the developed world, loss of talented individuals to upper-income countries and the inability to recruit and retain a robust regional workforce. While such conditions may now exist, they are by no means “guaranteed” to be so in the future. Aim: To consider a visionary future for the radiation sciences to encourage investment by individuals in their careers and countries in their cancer care resources such that the current resource-limited facilities will be on the leading edge of accurate, precision radiation medicine. Such a change in perspective can greatly impact recruiting and retaining expertise. Methods: As part of building a visionary strategic plan for radiation oncology and the radiation sciences for the next few decades, a personal opinion paper was prepared by authors from the US National Cancer Institute, Conseil Europeen p...