Our program for Quality Care and Research Impact aims to improve childhood cancer care in India through studies on all aspects of pediatric oncology. 

Global funding for childhood cancer research between 2008 and 2016 was just US$2 Billion. Less than 0.1% of the total funding was allocated to institutions based in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) like India. Better research can lead to better cancer care and treatment outcomes. This in turn can raise survival rates In India from to the global standard of 80% - 99%. 
CanKids assess that health services are safe, effective, timely, efficient, equitable, and people-centred.
Quality Care
We ensure that health services are
  • Safe
    Delivering healthcare that minimizes risks and harm by ensuring quality and affordability of drugs and diagnostics.
  • Effective
    Providing services based on scientific knowledge and following SOPs for good research practices. 
  • Timely
    Reducing delays through Social Support Teams at the grassroots level guiding families of children with cancer towards treatment
  • Efficient
    Maximizing resource use and avoiding waste during service delivery 
  • Equitable
    Delivering health care that does not differ in quality according to personal characteristics such as gender, race, ethnicity, geographical location or socioeconomic status. We also work with the motive to empower girl child and makes sure that no child is denied its right to treatment because of gender, race, geographical location or socioeconomic status. 
  • People-Centred
    Accounting for the preferences and aspirations of individual service users and the culture of their community
Research
​CanKids is committed to research in-house and within the paediatric oncology community, including the Indian Academy of Pediatrics - Pediatric Hematology Oncology and Indian Pediatric Oncology Group.
 
All research is done within CanKids or national and international collaborative projects where CanKids mobilises patient participants or is a study sponsor.

In 2020-21, we published a record 10 research papers.
Impact Assessment
CanKids assessments aim to:
  • Improve the quality of policy decisions by evaluating the likely positive and negative health impacts from proposed programmes or policies
  • Make recommendations to improve positive health impacts and mitigate negative ones
  • Increase participation of public stakeholders including our donors
  • Provide for a social model of health and well-being in which there is an explicit focus on equity, sustainability and social justice, and a commitment to openness and public scrutiny.

Our Publications

  1. Sharma A, Negi E, Arora, B, Pradhan D, Khurana M, Bagai P, Arora RS. A Survey of Nutritional Practices for Children with Cancer in India. Indian J Cancer 2015 Apr-Jun;52(2):191-3.

  2. Arora RS, Prabha S, Roy Moulik N, Bagai P. A survey of immunization practices in children with cancer in India. PediatrHematolOncol J 2016 May;1(1):2-5.

  3. Arora PR, Mishra R, Mehrotra S, Mittal C, Sharma S, Bagai P, Arora RS. Pilot initiative in India to explore the gonadal function and fertility outcomes of a cohort of childhood cancer survivors.  J Hum ReprodSci 2016 Apr-Jun;9(2):90-3.

  4. Ramandeep Singh Arora, Ankit Taluja, Puneet Rana Arora, Poonam Bagai, Rachna Seth, Gauri Kapoor. Delivery of services to childhood cancer survivors in India: A national survey January 2017.Pediatric Hematology Oncology Journal 2(2).

  5. Amita Mahajan, Ramandeep Singh Arora, Veronique Dinand et.al. First report on newly diagnosed Indian childhood Hodgkin lymphoma patients treated on a risk-stratified response-based collaborative protocol (InPOG-Hl-15-01).January 2017.Pediatric Hematology Oncology Journal 2(2).

  6. Stephanie Mardakis, Ramandeep S. Arora, Sameer Bakhshi, Ashima Arora, Huma Anis, Argerie Tsimicalis, A Qualitative Study of the Costs Experienced by Caregivers of Children Being Treated for Cancer in New Delhi, India. Cancer Reports. 2019 Jun;2(3):e1149.

  7. Neha Faruqui, Alexandra Martiniuk, Abhishek Sharma, Chanchal Sharma, Bhumika Rathore, Ramandeep Singh Arora, Rohina Joshi, Evaluating access to essential medicines for treating childhood cancers in New Delhi, India: a medicines availability and prices study. BMJ global health. 2019 Apr 1;4(2):e001379.

  8. Shivani Ahuja, Argerie Tsimicalis, Sara Lederman, Poonam Bagai, Alexandra Martiniuk, Sandhya Srinivas, Ramandeep Singh Arora, A Pilot Study to Determine the Out-of-pocket Expenditures by Families of Children Being Treated for Cancer at Public Hospitals in New Delhi, India. Psycho-oncology. 2019;28:1349-53.

  9. Faruqui N, Joshi R, Martiniuk A, Lowe J, Arora R, Anis H, Kalra M, Bakhshi S, Mishra A, Santa A, Sinha S, Siddaiahgari S, Seth R, Bernays S. A health care labyrinth: perspectives of caregivers on the journey to accessing timely cancer diagnosis and treatment for children in India. BMC Public Health. 2019 Dec 2;19(1):1613. https://doi: 10.1186/s12889-019-7911-x. PMID: 31791308; PMCID: PMC6889559.

  10. Rashmi Kumari, Akshay Tiwari, Ishita Maji, Haresh Gupta, Poonam Bagai, Mohini Daljeet Singh, Ramandeep Singh Arora Original Article, Volume 6, Issue 1, JBST January-April 2020 Facilitating Timely Access to Highly Specialized Surgery for Children with Extremity Bone and Soft-Tissue Sarcomas in North and Central India.

  11. Arora RS et al., InPOG-HL-15-01 - Challenges and lessons learnt in setting up the first collaborative multicentreprospective clinical trial in childhood cancer in India, Pediatric Hematology Oncology Journal, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.phoj.2020.02.001.

  12. S Ahuja, J Sharma, S Gupta  S Bakhshi, R Seth, A Singh, P Bagai, RS Arora. Patient tracking during treatment of children with cancer in India – An exploratory study. Cancer Reports.2021; e1359. https://doi.org/10.1002/cnr2.1359.

  13. Mahajan A, Singh M, Bakhshi S, Jain S, Radhakrishnan V, Verma N, Seth R, Arora RS, Dinand V, Kalra M, Mandal P, Kapoor G, Sajid M, Thulkar S, Arora A, Taluja A, Chandra J. Treating early-stage Hodgkin lymphoma in resource-limited settings: InPOG-HL-15-01 experience. Pediatr Blood Cancer. 2021 Oct;68(10):e29219. https://doi.org/10.1002/pbc.29219. Epub 2021 Jul 22. PMID: 34291860.