BREAKTHROUGH Center

BREAKTHROUGH was created around a persistent implementation gap in women's cancers: effective screening and early-detection technologies exist, yet many women in Kenya still reach diagnosis or treatment late because services are fragmented, unevenly distributed or difficult to navigate. The centre focuses on how breast and cervical cancer strategies can be integrated into public primary-care pathways rather than remaining isolated specialist activities.

The programme is both a research platform and a capacity-building centre. It supports two linked implementation-science projects: DADA LINK, which focuses on cervical-cancer screening and treatment linkage, and MATITI YANGU, which focuses on breast-cancer early detection and diagnostic linkage. Shared administrative, engagement, methods and research-capacity functions allow the projects to learn from one another without losing their distinct scientific questions.

BREAKTHROUGH also treats researcher development as part of cancer-control implementation. Sustainable improvement requires local teams who can identify barriers, design studies, engage health systems and translate evidence after a single grant ends. The centre therefore combines project delivery with training, mentorship and stakeholder engagement. Its wider proposition is that stronger cancer pathways and stronger implementation-science capacity can be built together, creating infrastructure for continued learning across screening, referral and linkage to care.

The centre therefore functions as connective infrastructure: individual projects answer focused questions, while shared methods, training and stakeholder relationships allow learning to accumulate across the cancer-control pathway.