Futureopportunities

Stakeholders consistently reported uncertainty about how success will be defined, measured, and demonstrated over time, and emphasised the need for honest, realistic, and clearly defined success measures and the establishment of robust evaluation architecture ahead of key milestones. Perspectives on what meaningful success looks like at the 5- and 10-year horizons spanned survival and incidence, equity outcomes, patient experience, data infrastructure, and First Nations leadership — with stakeholders clear that the Plan’s success will ultimately be judged by visible change in the experiences and outcomes of people affected by cancer.

The Plan requires a shift from broad aspirational goals to a clearly defined measurement framework — with indicators, baselines, and data collection established now to strengthen accountability and provide the sector with confidence in how long-term impact will be assessed.

While activity is underway across multiple domains, stakeholders identified a need for stronger prioritisation and delivery focus, clearer ordering of effort, and greater emphasis on high-impact actions, with consumers in particular emphasising urgency and the need for faster, more visible progress. Stakeholders highlighted the importance of moving implementation from broad activity to more targeted, measurable delivery, with specific dates, accountabilities, and expectations attached to actions, supported by clearer accountability mechanisms to ensure actions are monitored and acted upon rather than simply reported.

Stakeholders also emphasised that long-term impact, rather than activity, should be the measure of success. Recognising interdependencies across actions will also be important, as progress in some areas, such as data infrastructure and workforce capacity, enables and supports delivery in others.

Stakeholders consistently identified unclear roles, responsibilities, and funding arrangements across Commonwealth, state and territory, and sector initiatives, including limited visibility of who is responsible for specific implementation activities and partnerships. Stakeholders also noted overlap and fragmentation between the Plan, the NACCHO Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Cancer Plan, and jurisdictional strategies.

Stakeholders identified opportunities to strengthen governance clarity to reduce duplication and support more coherent implementation across the cancer system. Suggested approaches included developing a system map of the cancer ecosystem - clarifying roles, responsibilities, and accountabilities - alongside stronger communication and coordination mechanisms across governments and the broader sector regarding progress and delivery. Stakeholders noted that clearer articulation of roles would also help organisations and individuals identify where they sit within the system and understand their potential contribution within their own sphere of influence, supporting broader and more active engagement with implementation across the sector.

The Plan operates as a voluntary, non-binding framework, relying on coordinated action and sector alignment rather than regulatory or legislative mechanisms. Stakeholders highlighted the opportunity to consider a broader mix of policy levers - including funding agreements, accreditation standards, reporting requirements, and other accountability mechanisms beyond non-binding strategy and guidance - to create clearer expectations for delivery and support more consistent and sustainable implementation over time. These levers represent foundational governance and accountability settings that could strengthen implementation consistency over time.

There is a clear opportunity to explore how the Plan’s objectives can be more explicitly embedded across government agendas more broadly — including through cross-portfolio policy alignment, intergovernmental agreements, and national reform processes — to complement and strengthen existing agendas and deepen the Plan's influence across the system.

Data and measurement were consistently identified as both a core system constraint (System-level barriers - Implementation barriers and enablers (KEQ3)) and a future opportunity. Stakeholders highlighted that limitations in data linkage, accessibility, and comparability constrain the ability to monitor progress, demonstrate impact, close equity gaps, and support continuous improvement across the cancer system.

Opportunities identified by stakeholders included strengthening national data linkage and integration, further developing and operationalising the Data Framework (including associated infrastructure investment), and improving the timeliness, accessibility, and usability of data for decision-making. Strengthened data systems were described as foundational to monitoring, evaluation, accountability, and system-wide learning.

Stakeholders identified a consistent gap between strategic intent and practical implementation capability, particularly at the service level, where national frameworks and priorities have not yet been sufficiently supported by the tools, guidance, and knowledge-sharing mechanisms needed to translate them into frontline practice (Box 24).

Opportunities identified by stakeholders included providing practical implementation supports (such as strengthening and extending the Implementation Partnership model), enhancing knowledge brokerage and shared learning across organisations, sectors, and jurisdictions, and supporting the translation of evidence into service-level practice. The ACCN is an existing platform designed for this purpose that warrants further activation and broader sector awareness. Cancer Australia was identified as well-placed to play a stronger information brokering and coordination role across the system.

As noted in Risks and unintended consequences (KEQ4), workforce capacity is a significant system constraint and an equally significant opportunity. Stakeholders identified targeted investment in workforce pipelines — including nursing, allied health, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cancer care roles — culturally safe training, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander leadership pathways, and models of care as priorities for the next phase of the Plan, describing workforce capability as a prerequisite for scaling and sustaining implementation, particularly in regional, rural, remote, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander community settings.

Workforce investment was also identified as an area where targeted action could deliver relatively rapid and visible improvements in frontline care. The analysis of activities undertaken to date highlights an opportunity to strengthen focus on Strategic Objective 5, with comparatively lower levels of activity in workforce planning and sustainability.

Building on the elevation of equity as a system-wide priority identified in Implementation barriers and enablers (KEQ3), stakeholders emphasised the need to move equity from a policy principle to a measurable and resourced component of system performance. Stakeholders called for greater specificity, accountability, and investment, including strengthening equity-specific indicators and reporting, embedding equity in funding and service design, and ensuring accountability for equity outcomes is shared across the system rather than falling disproportionately on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander organisations.

This includes ensuring equity outcomes are clearly articulated and defined on appropriate terms – including what equity means in practice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples – and recognising that priority population frameworks do not always capture the complexity faced by people, particularly when experiencing multiple and compounding forms of disadvantage.

Stakeholders also identified opportunities to expand and deepen the equity focus - including continued prioritisation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander outcomes, greater attention to rural and remote and CALD communities, rare, less common, and advanced cancers, financial toxicity, and access to supportive care and psychosocial services.

As noted in Implementation barriers and enablers (KEQ3), consumers report the least visible change of any stakeholder group. While the Plan has given some consumers language and confidence to advocate for their care, stakeholders consistently identified stronger embedding of lived experience — not only in policy and advisory processes, but also in care design, multidisciplinary teams, service delivery, and evaluation — as a priority for the next phase of implementation. This includes reaching beyond existing networks and informed consumers to engage people with lived experience across diverse settings, cancer types, and communities — including those who are not already connected to Cancer Australia or the broader cancer sector.

Consumers emphasised the need to “get out of the bubble” and engage beyond established stakeholder groups, ensuring that consumer voice reflects the full diversity of those the Plan serves rather than those already at the table.

Clearer public-facing communication of the Plan and greater visibility of implementation progress were also identified as opportunities to strengthen accountability, build trust, and maintain the Plan’s relevance and credibility for those it ultimately serves.

Stakeholders highlighted the importance of maintaining responsiveness to emerging evidence, new technologies, workforce pressures, and evolving population needs over the Plan's 10-year horizon. The pace of change in cancer treatment, genomics, and digital health was consistently identified as requiring an approach that is dynamic rather than static, with stakeholders specifically noting the risk of falling behind in fast-moving fields such as precision medicine if adaptive mechanisms are not in place.

Stakeholders identified the opportunity for the Plan to operate as a living framework, with built-in mechanisms for horizon scanning, periodic review, and adaptive planning to ensure the Plan and broader cancer system remain current and responsive over time. This is consistent with the Plan’s original future-focused design intent - the 10-year actions are to be codesigned with the sector and developed at an appropriate point in time, providing a structured opportunity to adapt to the evolving cancer control environment.

Variation across stakeholder groups

While there is strong agreement on the key areas for change and strengthening, stakeholder groups differ in emphasis. Policy and system actors prioritise coordination, role clarity, and system architecture. Service providers and NGOs emphasise practical implementation tools, funding certainty, and clearer delivery expectations. Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander stakeholders focus on structural reform to ensure equity commitments are delivered in practice, sustained resourcing, and accountability. Consumers prioritise visible impact, faster progress, and stronger recognition of equity-related outcomes. Together, these perspectives reinforce the need for an approach that strengthens implementation capacity while maintaining a clear and visible focus on outcomes, equity, and lived experience.