{"id":492649,"date":"2026-06-10T15:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-10T15:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492649\/"},"modified":"2026-06-10T15:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-06-10T15:18:12","slug":"ottawa-announces-new-panel-on-preventive-care-and-cancer-screening-guidelines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/492649\/","title":{"rendered":"Ottawa announces new panel on preventive care and cancer screening guidelines"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

A new health care panel will begin work on updating national cancer screening guidelines.Melissa Tait\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Ottawa announced a new National Advisory Panel on Preventive Health Services on Wednesday, more than a year after it shut down an old version of the panel amid controversy over when to start screening women for breast cancer. <\/p>\n

The new 14-member panel will be chaired by David Keegan, a family physician and professor at the University of Calgary\u2019s Cumming School of Medicine who gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic for fighting to keep mask mandates in place on airplanes and in hospitals after governments lifted them. <\/p>\n

Dr. Keegan said in an interview Tuesday that he views his new appointment as an extension of his role as a primary-care doctor. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhen I\u2019m with a patient, I\u2019m thinking about their issue today, their issue in five years. How\u2019s that going to translate to the next 40 years or more of their life?\u201d he said. \u201cThis role is incredible because I get to think about that for all 42 million people on these lands.\u201d<\/p>\n

However, Dr. Keegan acknowledged that he and his colleagues have a challenging job ahead as they try to make up lost time after former health minister Mark Holland halted the work of their predecessors in March, 2025. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Dr. David Keegan is the new chair of National Advisory Panel on Preventive Health Services.Stacey Watson\/Supplied<\/p>\n

High on the new panel\u2019s to-do list will be updating national cancer screening guidelines, some of which are more than a decade old. <\/p>\n

Dr. Keegan said it\u2019s too soon to say which guidelines the panel will tackle first, and the group could decide to work on several in parallel. But \u201cit\u2019s very clear that there\u2019s a particular interest in breast-cancer screening,\u201d he said, adding the panel might decide to \u201cpursue that as a priority topic.\u201d <\/p>\n

Setting mammography guidelines proved to be the undoing of the now-defunct Canadian Task Force on Preventive Health Care, which was established in 2009 to provide non-binding advice to primary-care providers. <\/p>\n

Canadian Cancer Society urges lowering of screening age for colorectal cancer<\/a><\/p>\n

The task force faced heavy pressure from some patient and physicians\u2019 groups to lower the starting age for routine mammograms to 40 from 50, especially after the task force\u2019s American counterpart recommended the change in 2023. <\/p>\n

Rather than follow suit, the Canadian task force released a draft guideline<\/a> in 2024 that said women in their 40s who want a mammogram should be able to get one, but which stopped short of endorsing breast screening for all women after their 40th birthdays. <\/p>\n

Mr. Holland slammed the draft guidelines<\/a>, saying he felt women deserved earlier access, and promised to expedite an external review of the task force\u2019s processes and governance. He ultimately halted the task force\u2019s work<\/a> three months before the publication of the external review<\/a>, which recommended the task force be overhauled. <\/p>\n

All of that paved the way for Marjorie Michel, the current Health Minister, to announce on Wednesday a new expert body with a new name: The National Advisory Committee on Preventive Health Services, led by Dr. Keegan. <\/p>\n

Dr. Keegan, who has a cardiopulmonary condition, filed a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission over the federal government lifting mask mandates on airplanes in 2022. Dr. Keegan said the commission elected not to deal with the complaint, and he has since filed an application for judicial review.<\/p>\n

Along with Dr. Keegan, the new committee includes Zainab Abdurrahman, a clinical immunologist and immediate past president of the Ontario Medical Association; Dani\u00e8le Behn Smith, British Columbia\u2019s deputy provincial health officer for Indigenous Health; and Jessica Hopkins, the vice-president and chief of communicable disease control at Public Health Ontario, among others.<\/p>\n

Brandon Purcell, the Canadian Cancer Society\u2019s advocacy manager for prevention and early detection, said the new panel will \u201chave a big task ahead of them to re-establish trust in the community, as well as to ensure that their guidance is taken and valued.\u201d <\/p>\n

The old task force last published guidelines on colorectal cancer screening<\/a> in 2016, prostate cancer screening<\/a> in 2014 and cervical cancer screening<\/a> in 2013. <\/p>\n

Several provincial governments have already changed cancer screening guidelines without waiting for an official national consensus. Most provinces have either lowered the starting age for mammograms or promised to do so, while Prince Edward Island and Ontario have also lowered or plan to lower the starting age for colorectal cancer screening using a stool test to 45 from 50. <\/p>\n

Shiela Appavoo, an Edmonton breast radiologist who led a coalition of groups opposed to the old task force, said the new advisory panel\u2019s advice will still matter a great deal to frontline physicians, even if preventive health policies differ from province to province. <\/p>\n

\u201cIf things go as I hope they go,\u201d she said, \u201cit should make a very big difference.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A new health care panel will begin work on updating national cancer screening…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":492650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[2522,2511,2523,2476,2503,2524,289,2502,2516,2517,2513,2504,2501,113,835,246,2515,2509,2533,2505,2506,1523,103,397,396,61,60,2512,166,1529,2525,768,2528,2529,2531,2526,2530,2152,2527,2507,2519,2520,1650,2518,2153,2510,80,2521,2514,2508,268,2532],"class_list":["post-492649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-healthcare","tag-alberta","tag-arts-news","tag-bc","tag-breaking-news","tag-breaking-news-video","tag-british-columbia","tag-canada","tag-canada-news","tag-canada-sports","tag-canada-sports-news","tag-canada-trafficcanada-weather","tag-canadian-breaking-news","tag-canadian-news","tag-economy","tag-education","tag-environment","tag-federal-government","tag-foreign-news","tag-globe-and-mail","tag-globe-and-mail-breaking-news","tag-globe-and-mail-canada-news","tag-government","tag-health","tag-health-care","tag-healthcare","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-life-news","tag-lifestyle","tag-local-news","tag-manitoba","tag-national-news","tag-new-brunswick","tag-newfoundland-and-labrador","tag-northwest-territories","tag-nova-scotia","tag-nunavut","tag-ontario","tag-pei","tag-photos","tag-political-news","tag-political-opinion","tag-politics","tag-politics-news","tag-quebec","tag-sports-news","tag-technology","tag-travel","tag-trudeau","tag-us-news","tag-world-news","tag-yukon"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=492649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/492649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/492650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=492649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=492649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=492649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}