China’s Key Medical Development Award 2020, awarded by the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, recognised our health-economic evaluation of cervical cancer prevention strategies in China. The recognised study, published in The Lancet Global Health in 2020, evaluated the domestic HPV vaccine price and economic returns for cervical cancer prevention and identified cost-effective strategies for large-scale HPV vaccination and cervical cancer control. This work provided timely evidence to support China’s transition toward affordable domestic HPV vaccination and informed national discussions on cervical cancer elimination, vaccination scale-up and prevention policy. The award highlights the public-health and policy significance of modelling and economic evaluation in guiding high-impact, population-level cancer prevention decisions.