328200
Rio Grande Cancer Foundation's Community Cancer Assessment: Findings and Implications
A patient-centered approach is at the core of the American College of Surgeons' Commission on Cancer (CoC) standards. These standards ensure that key quality of cancer care elements are provided to every person treated in a CoC-accredited facility throughout their diagnosis and treatment process. The CoC requires that its accredited cancer programs perform an assessment of their community and develop programs to address barriers to access and cancer care. With the goal of receiving accreditation for its partners and better meeting cancer care needs of community members, the Rio Grande Cancer Foundation undertook a comprehensive community cancer assessment in 2014-2015 to identify the most pressing cancer care issues within in El Paso, Texas. Through community focus groups, interviews, and surveys, the process engaged over 200 individuals involved in different aspects of cancer care. Community participants discussed many barriers to care, including a lack of information about their cancer journey, difficulties navigating a fragmented system, and limited support services for patients and families. Cancer care providers discussed language and cultural barriers, limited funding, and difficulties collaborating across the system. These findings led to the development of several recommendations to better meet the needs of the cancer care community in El Paso. With these recommendations, Rio Grande Cancer Foundation and its partners will move forward to develop a support group curriculum, a centralized repository of cancer-related resources, and convene cancer care providers across the system, among other strategies. The presentation will discuss the community cancer health assessment process, key findings, and recommendations.
Learning Areas:
Assessment of individual and community needs for health education
Program planning
Provision of health care to the public
Systems thinking models (conceptual and theoretical models), applications related to public health
Learning Objectives:
Describe best practices in conducting community cancer assessments.
Name key findings from the community cancer assessment conducted in El Paso, TX.
Discuss how the assessment findings are guiding strategic planning in the El Paso cancer community.
Keyword(s): Community Health Assessment, Cancer
Presenting author's disclosure statement:Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I am the project lead on this community cancer assessment and I have served as the principal investigator on other large-scale assessments as well as other federally-funded projects.
Any relevant financial relationships? No
I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines,
and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed
in my presentation.
