Collaborative Approaches Provide Comprehensive Support in Cancer Care

Community partnerships and inter-organizational collaboration play a critical role when it comes to addressing barriers to cancer care. While treatment access remains a pressing issue, equally important are the challenges that exist beyond treatment, including insurance, transportation, and concerns about social services, explains Jade E. Jones, MD, Emory Winship Cancer Institute.

In this interview with The American Journal of Managed Care®, Jones explores these factors and highlights the value of social organizations like I Will Survive that offer support and assistance to patients with breast cancer. These topics and more were explored at a recent Institute for Value-Based Medicine® event in Atlanta, Georgia.

This transcript has been lightly edited; captions were auto-generated.

Transcript

What are some of the most significant barriers to equitable cancer care today, and how can health care systems better address social determinants of health to improve outcomes?

I think it's very multi[faceted], it's not 1 answer. So, I see patients at large academic centers, Emory, but I also take patients at Grady. And 1 overlapping theme is insurance, right? So you get diagnosed with cancer, first of all, you need insurance to get in the door to get the chemotherapy, to see the doctor. There are some places that will take you uninsured, but that's a big barrier for patients. And then after that, you know, yes, they have the cancer, and you need to be able to get them the drugs they need. But, you know, does the patient have the transportation to get there? The other social factors—so, if someone is not working as often, right? Are they paying the light bill? All these other things that matter. So you have to definitely not just take care of the physical person, but also have these other resources in place in terms of insurance, transportation, social services, so that the patient can focus on the actual cancer and not have to worry about all these other barriers to health.

In your practice, have any resources or strategies been the most impactful for identifying health inequities in cancer care?

Absolutely, and I definitely think it takes a whole team, right? So then we talk about just the patient clinical area. I think to give good cancer care, you need 1) the resources of having doctors with the knowledge of what treatment to give and 2) you need really good social services. And so, at Grady and Emory, we have a really good social worker, right? So, there are grants and funding that will help patients when they're not working as often so that they can keep their lights on, you know? I take care of breast cancer. These are mothers, right? They're often the person that's running their household, and so when they're sick—do they have a support system? I think this comes from inter-institution resources, like social services, transportation. Grady has a bus that sends patients. Emory also has funding to help with transportation as well.

But then also, outside resources; there's a lot of patient advocacy. I work with one called "I Will Survive" that helps with social [support]. They'll call or email the light company and say, “Hey, this patient has cancer. Can we just delay the bill?” Not to say that this patient will never pay their bills, but like in this setting of these months when this patient is working less hours, if they're not getting their normal income, can there be some delays and things like that? So, I definitely think you need the institutional resource of plugging into social services, but you also need to have partnerships with community organizations that also have this primary goal of helping cancer patients.