Coalition Aims to Improve Supportive Cancer Care

Together for Supportive Cancer Care is a collaborative effort between health care organizations to enhance the quality and accessibility of supportive care for patients with cancer. Recognizing the insufficiency of current supportive care services, the coalition aims to improve the overall patient experience by addressing various aspects of care, including physical, psychological, social, and spiritual support.

Andrew T. Leitner, MD, chair in the Department of Supportive Care Medicine, associate clinical professor in the Department of Anesthesiology, and chief in the Division of Interventional Patin Management at City of Hope in Duarte, California, spoke with CancerNetwork^® about this new initiative. By sharing best practices, conducting research, and advocating for policy changes, the coalition strives to create a more comprehensive and supportive care environment for patients with cancer and their families.

Transcript:

Together for Supportive Cancer Care came from a recognition that a number of health care organizations are working to advance a common goal and can do it better together. That common goal is the comprehensive support that patients navigating a serious illness—in this case, cancer—need, and the ways that the health care system currently meets those needs is insufficient for the scope and scale of those needs. How do member organizations come together to learn from one another, share best practices, conduct research, and move advocacy toward policy that helps the supportive care provision for patients and their loved ones [with] cancer?

One of the first things the coalition was primed to do was to define terms and the scope of the problem. To start, when we talk about supportive care, we talk broadly about the support of the patient with cancer and their family and community, but that specifically means a constellation of access to various clinical and community services and programs to help manage the various adverse effects of a cancer diagnosis. The coalition first and foremost was establishing a shared set of definitions of what we mean when we say supportive care in cancer or supportive cancer care. Some of the essential components of that include how we assess and manage physical symptoms, how we provide psychological and emotional support, and social and practical support. [Another focus is] a number of the specialty aspects of supportive care in cancer, such as spiritual care, end-of-life care, various rehabilitation services, and integrative therapies. How do we pull all of those together so that they’re well well-coordinated as the patient is navigating our complex health care system?