40 years of Daffodil Day reflected in research progress: From counting cancer cases to preventing them before they start

As Australia marks the 40th anniversary of Daffodil Day, Cancer Council’s annual fundraising and awareness campaign, it is tempting to reflect on the progress in cancer control through a series of scientific breakthroughs: new treatments, improved survival rates and advances in screening. Those achievements deserve celebration. Yet they tell only part of the story.

Over the past four decades, Cancer Council has played a vital role not only in supporting research, but also in translating evidence into prevention, advocacy and public health action. Arguably the most profound successes in cancer control are measured not by the patients who are treated, but by the people who never become patients at all.

Learning the value of cancer data

My own connection with that story began in 1990, when I joined the NSW Central Cancer Registry as a data clerk. The work was largely invisible to the public, but it showed me early that high-quality cancer data are one of the foundations of effective cancer control. I helped develop systems that paved the way for small area cancer data to be used to describe and determine epidemiological patterns in our cancer data.

Enhanced coding and geocoding then made it possible to identify important geographic patterns in cancer, including differences associated with sun-related risk, infections, tobacco exposure, lifestyle factors and access to screening. Today, the same logic has matured into sophisticated cancer mapping. The Australian Cancer Atlas program, developed by Cancer Council Queensland researchers and collaborators, is internationally recognised for showing geographic inequalities in cancer risk and outcomes with remarkable clarity¹.

From there, the broader transformation in cancer control becomes clear. Four decades ago, much of the focus was on identifying potential causes of cancer, including the roles of smoking, ultraviolet radiation, occupational exposures, infections, diet and other environmental risks. Epidemiological studies have provided the evidence needed to turn knowledge into practical prevention.

Those early studies helped establish one of the central principles of modern cancer control: the most effective cancer control is intervening before a cancer ever occurs.

Prevention at population scale

In tobacco control, cancer researchers, epidemiologists and advocacy organisations including Cancer Councils worked alongside governments over decades to translate evidence into policy. Beginning with restrictions on tobacco advertising in the 1970s and expanding through comprehensive advertising and sponsorship bans in the 1990s, Australia progressively reduced the visibility and social acceptability of tobacco use. Smoke-free workplace and hospitality laws, introduced across jurisdictions from the 1990s and 2000s, protected non-smokers from second-hand smoke and further shifted social norms. These measures were complemented by mass-media campaigns, tobacco taxation, graphic health warnings and, most notably, Australia’s world-first plain packaging legislation in 2012. Together, these initiatives produced one of the most successful public health interventions in Australian history, contributing to a substantial decline in smoking prevalence across the population.

The scale of that achievement can be seen in the numbers. In 1986, around one-third of Australian men and almost three in ten women were current smokers² by 2022–23, fewer than one in ten Australians aged 14 and over smoked daily³.

The impact of these policies is now evident in cancer outcomes. Lung cancer incidence and mortality rates in Australian men have fallen substantially over recent decades, reflecting reductions in tobacco exposure that began many years earlier⁴. Although rates in women peaked later because smoking uptake occurred later in successive generations, they too are now showing favourable trends. Cancer Council modelling has estimated that the combined effects of decades of tobacco control policies and programs had already averted nearly 80,000 lung cancer deaths by 2015 compared with what would have occurred had smoking remained at historical levels⁵. These gains did not arise from a single discovery or intervention but from the sustained combination of research, surveillance, advocacy, legislation and public education. They demonstrate how population-level prevention can change the trajectory of disease, often benefiting individuals who may never realise that they are living proof of its success.

Tobacco control remains the clearest example of that principle in action. Cancer Council has been a major contributor to the evidence, advocacy and public education that helped drive smoking rates to historic lows. The resulting reductions in lung cancer and other smoking-related diseases demonstrate the value of prevention delivered at population scale.

From public health messages to social norms

A similar shift can be seen in skin cancer prevention. Australia has some of the highest melanoma rates in the world, making ultraviolet (UV) radiation one of the nation’s most significant cancer risks and melanoma often unenviably referred to as “Australia’s National Cancer”. Collaborative research involving Cancer Council researchers provided compelling evidence that excessive sun exposure and severe sunburns in childhood and adolescence increase the risk of melanoma in later life, helping to underpin Australia’s long-standing investment in skin cancer prevention⁶. Cancer Council has helped transform public awareness of sun protection through research, education, advocacy and campaigns that became part of Australian culture. Over time, sun protection shifted from a public health message to a social norm: Cancer Council’s Slip! Slop! Slap! campaign, launched in 1981 and later expanded to Slip! Slop! Slap! Seek! Slide!⁷, is widely credited with helping change attitudes and behaviour, and melanoma rates in Australians under 40 are now falling.

Screening and early detection

Prevention has also been strengthened by earlier detection. Cancer Council research has played a major role in shaping the direction of these initiatives.  National programs for breast, cervical and bowel cancer screening have transformed outcomes by detecting disease earlier or identifying pre-cancerous changes before cancer develops. Research led by Cancer Council researchers and colleagues provided the evidence and modelling framework that has charted Australia’s pathway to cervical cancer elimination, showing how vaccination and HPV-based screening could drive cervical cancer rates to levels where the disease would become such a rare diagnosis that it would be defined as an eliminate health problem⁸. More recently, attention has turned to lung cancer screening for high-risk populations⁹ and evidence-based guidance around prostate cancer early detection¹⁰.

Viewed across 40 years, the trajectory is clear. Cancer control has evolved from identifying risks, to preventing exposures, to detecting disease earlier and treating it more effectively. Increasingly, these efforts are linked through more sophisticated data systems, population surveillance and predictive analytics.

The next frontier: precision prevention

The next step is to make prevention and early detection more targeted. Advances in genetics, genomics, artificial intelligence and risk prediction are creating opportunities to tailor prevention and screening to individual risk profiles, family history and environmental exposures.

This precision approach to cancer prevention could be a game changer for Australians, using predictive tools to identify people at higher risk earlier and intervene sooner, helping more people avoid a cancer diagnosis altogether, or detect cancer at its earliest stages, when it may be cured with less intensive treatment. At its heart, this is about using better data and better tools to understand risk earlier and give people a greater chance of preventing cancer or finding it when treatment can be most effective.

As exciting as these developments are, they remain grounded in the same principle that underpinned my early days working with raw cancer registry data: better information leads to better decisions.

Evidence into action

Seen in this light, Daffodil Day’s 40th anniversary is not only an opportunity to celebrate progress, but also to recognise how that progress has been achieved. It has come from collecting data, building evidence, informing policy, supporting prevention and translating research into action. From early paper records to complex national linked datasets, and onward to a future of integrated biospecimen repositories, genomic and molecular epidemiology, artificial intelligence and precision prevention, each advance has contributed to a larger goal: reducing the burden of cancer for future generations.

References

1. Australian Cancer Atlas 2.0 (https://atlas.cancer.org.au). Cancer Council Queensland and Queensland University of Technology. Version 05-2024. Accessed 12/08/2026
2. Hill DJ. Australian patterns of tobacco smoking in 1986. Med J Aust. 1988 Jul 4;149(1):6-10. doi: 10.5694/j.1326-5377.1988.tb120474.x. PMID: 3386578.
3. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW). National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2022-2023: Tobacco smoking in the NDSHS. Canberra: AIHW; 2024.
4. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. Cancer Data in Australia. Published July 14, 2026. Accessed August 12, 2026. https://www.aihw.gov.au/reports/cancer/cancer-data-in-australia
5. Luo Q, Steinberg J, O’Connell DL, Yu XQ, Caruana M, Wade S, Pesola F, Grogan PB, Dessaix A, Freeman B, Dunlop S, Sasieni P, Blakely T, Banks E, Canfell K. Lung cancer mortality in Australia in the twenty-first century: How many lives can be saved with effective tobacco control? Lung Cancer. 2019;130:208-215.
6. Cust AE, Goumas C, Armstrong BK, Schmid H, Aitken JF, Giles GG, Kefford RF, Hopper JL, Mann GJ. Early-life sun exposure and risk of melanoma before age 40 years. Cancer Causes Control. 2011;22(6):885-897.
7. Montague M, Borland R, Sinclair C. Slip! Slop! Slap! and SunSmart, 1980-2000: Skin cancer control and 20 years of population-based campaigning. Health Educ Behav. 2001 Jun;28(3):290-305. doi: 10.1177/109019810102800304. PMID: 11380050.
8.  Hall MT, Simms KT, Lew JB, Smith MA, Brotherton JML, Saville M, Frazer IH, Canfell K. The projected timeframe until cervical cancer elimination in Australia: a modelling study. The Lancet Public Health. 2019;4(1):e19-e27. doi:10.1016/S2468-2667(18)30183-X
9. Weber MF, Caruana M, Smith MA, Lew JB, Manners D, Marshall H, Canfell K, et al. Updated cost-effectiveness of lung cancer screening in Australia in the era of