Forming Collaborative, Individualized Cancer Survivorship Care Strategies

Andrew M. Evens, DO, MBA, MSc, spoke with CancerNetwork^® at the 2024 Annual Oncology Clinical Practice and Research Summit about his institution’s mission of survivorship for improving the quality of care among survivors of cancer. He discussed this initiative in the context of a presentation he moderated at the session, in which other expert panelists from his practice highlighted ongoing efforts to improve cancer survivorship care.

Evens is the deputy director for Clinical Services at Rutgers Cancer Institute and the system director of Medical Oncology and the oncology lead at RWJBarnabas Health Medical Group. He is also the associate vice chancellor for Clinical Innovation and Data Analytics at Rutgers Biomedical and Health Sciences.

Evens emphasized collaboration as a key component to optimizing post-survivorship treatment. He described his teamwork with Louise Ligresti, MD, chief of Cancer Survivorship at Rutgers Cancer Institute and Cooperman Barnabas Medical Center and an assistant professor of Medicine at Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson Medical School, as part of delivering an individualized care plan for cancer survivors. Looking ahead, he stated that he and his colleagues aim to generate more evidence through clinical research to inform these patient-centered survivorship care strategies.

Transcript:

[Our mission of survivorship care] entails, number one, collaboration. Louise Ligresti, MD, is a bona fide survivorship expert, and so, what is that optimal collaboration with the treating oncologist? At least, how we see it, there is not a one-size-fits-all [solution]. It’s individualized to the patient and to the cancer provider. There are some cases—even myself; I treat [patients with] lymphoma—where, depending on the situation, I’ll maybe get a one-time consult. They’ll get a detailed analysis and survivorship plan, and that might be it. There are other cases where we do shared care with the cancer survivorship expert—in this case, Ligresti—where we might rotate. Then there are others, where it might be 10 to 15 years out, where the chance of relapse is essentially zero. They will totally transfer care in a more longitudinal manner to the cancer survivorship expert. That’s how we see it.

[Survivorship care] is flexible, dynamic, very individualized, and patient-centered, but also—as best as humanly possible—evidence-based. Of course, we need to generate more evidence, and we’re happy to participate in some clinical research to do exactly that.

Reference

Evens A, Cole P, Ligresti L, Manne S. Cancer survivorship: scale, scope, and partnerships for patient-centered care. Presented at the 2024 Annual Oncology Clinical Practice and Research Summit; November 15-16, 2024; New Brunswick, NJ.