Carolina is the Targeted Screening Lead for the UK NSC Secretariat and the Department of Health and Social Care screening team.
She supports the UK NSC in setting the strategic direction for targeted screening and leads work to bring together and interpret the evidence on targeted screening topics. Central to her role is collaborating with partners across the NHS and guideline-making bodies, as well as academia, clinical practice, and charities.
Carolina has worked on several cervical screening projects for the UK NSC, including the HPValidate study in England and leading the UK NSC’s work on an in-service evaluation of HPV self-sampling in the NHS Cervical Screening Programme.
UK NSC works with the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and Health Improvement Scotland (HIS) to help improve early detection of health conditions.
The UK NSC evidence review process guidance has been updated with an expanded definition of in-service evaluation.
The UK NSC has recommended that women who never or rarely attend their routine cervical screening appointments could be offered a self-sampling test option.
The UK NSC is consulting on whether to offer an HPV self-sampling option to people who rarely or never attend their cervical screening appointments.
The HPValidate study has published its final results and found that 4 combinations of HPV self-collection device and test worked well – these can now be used to help find out how self-sampling could be introduced into cervical screening.