Paper short abstract:

This paper maps cervical cancer prevention advocacy in Indonesia, highlighting the leadership and resilience of the key community-based groups involved, limitations of advocacy focused only on biomedical solutions, and the potential for an intersectional framework to inform advocacy efforts.

Paper long abstract:

Indonesia has among the highest cervical cancer mortality rates in the world; each day 26 women die from and 58 women are diagnosed with cervical cancer in the country (KICKS, 2017). The absence of a national screening program means that Indonesian women are typically diagnosed at more advanced stages of cervical cancer, for which treatment is more invasive and expensive, and subsequently their chances of survival are lower. The burden on women affected by cervical cancer, their families and communities, and Indonesia's under-resourced health system is immense. Based on findings from a current four year study, this paper maps the leadership roles of community-based organisations and their contributions in advocating for cervical cancer prevention in Indonesia. It highlights the progress and resilience of these groups in raising the profile of cervical cancer through a range of media, and the crucial gaps they identify and fill in the government response. It identifies areas for improvement, including the narrow focus on biomedical solutions to cancer prevention, and the assumptions of a high degree of sexual and reproductive health literacy, reproductive agency and access to health services among women who are the targets of information campaigns. The paper explores the possibilities of utilising an intersectional advocacy framework to guide cervical cancer prevention, which would explicitly engage with the social causes of cervical cancer, including gender and socioeconomic inequalities, and health system deficits. The paper advances our understanding of the roles and impact of non-governmental actors in the global fight against cancer.