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Article History

Received: 21 November 2025

Accepted: 3 June 2026

First Online: 29 June 2026

Declarations

Ethics approval and consent to participate: The parent community-based oral cancer screening study under which this work was conducted received ethical approval from the Mahamana Pandit Madan Mohan Malaviya Cancer Centre (MPMMCC) Institutional Ethics Committee (Approval No.: OIEC/110000015/2021/00001). The parent study also received administrative clearance under the existing Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) between the MPMMCC and the District Health Authorities for community-based cancer prevention, control and surveillance activities in Varanasi [ ].For the present capacity-building study, a separate IEC approval was not obtained because the activities meet the exemption criteria outlined in the Indian Council of Medical Research (ICMR)–National Ethical Guidelines for Biomedical and Health Research Involving Human Participants (2017) [ ]. According to these guidelines, programme evaluations conducted within public health programmes implemented by government agencies—when undertaken solely for monitoring, refinement, or improvement, and where no individual identifiers are collected—are exempt from Institutional Ethics Committee review. This study utilised only de-identified data routinely generated through these ongoing public-health outreach activities, which are part of the hospital’s mandated service responsibilities. All procedures were conducted in accordance with international Good Clinical Practice (GCP) standards and the ethical principles of the Declaration of Helsinki. Written informed consent was obtained from all participating Accredited Social Health Activists (ASHAs) prior to data collection.

Consent for publication: All authors consented for the publication.

Competing interests: The authors declare no competing interests.