As 2022 draws to a close, we’ve been reflecting on some of our highlights from the past year from our team, alumni and colleagues. It’s certainly been a big year, with special milestones and achievements to celebrate. This year we've also been thrilled to be able to reunite with our Regional Managers after nearly three years, as well as our alumni, partners and colleagues at in-person events. As always, the support of our friends and colleagues has inspired and informed us this year, and we’ve enjoyed sharing in these moments with you.
This year marked the McCabe Centre for Law and Cancer’s ten year anniversary, which we celebrated with an online virtual dialogue, and in person at an event in Geneva prior to the World Cancer Congress hosted by our founding partner, the Union for International Cancer Control (UICC). The Congress itself was an incredible opportunity for the McCabe Centre team to share insights and perspectives on cancer prevention, treatment and care. We were delighted to be included in the Congress' publicly available sessions, along with our Cancer Council Victoria colleagues. Our tenth year also saw us redesignated as a World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for a further four years.
2022 also marked ten years of tobacco plain packaging in Australia – a landmark public health measure which has seen more than 25 countries across the world follow suit and introduce their own plain packaging laws. In our role as a WHO Framework Convention on Tobacco Control Knowledge Hub, we have worked with 18 of these countries who have now introduced such laws.
Read more about the plain packaging anniversary here
Online learning was still a strong focus of this year, and we were proud to run our first ever Union for International Cancer Control Master course, which was our first training for civil society. We also ran the third edition of our flagship online training, strengthening our alumni network and getting unique perspectives on law and cancer and NCD prevention and control from 33 countries around the world. We also continued to expand our work to include WHO Euro and Eastern Mediterranean regions.
In our role as a WHO Collaborating Centre, we continued to publish our regular Law and NCDs newsletter, and participated in Technical Advisory Group and Regional Committee Meetings, as well as Health Taxes and other workshops.
We also co-hosted a tobacco control workshop in Geneva and a plain packaging workshop with the WHO Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean.
Throughout 2022, we made many submissions that we’re proud of, including submissions about the proposed Australian Centre for Disease Control and the draft Australian Cancer Plan with our Cancer Council colleagues. We also made submissions on Australia's new development policy.
This year we also authored and contributed to publications including ‘ Litigation in tobacco control: past, present and future’ for Tobacco Control's 30 th Anniversary, and in Foresight Global Health. We also worked with our collaborators NCD Alliance and UICC on the WHO Best Buys consultation.
We also welcomed three new staff members to the team this year in our Melbourne office and look forward to working closely with our colleagues and regional managers in the new year.
We also look forward to working with our supporters, alumni and colleagues in the new year, and continuing to use law to help people live happier and healthier lives.