Do I Have a Choice: Shared Decision-Making at Critical Points in a Long Illness Journey

If you are living with cancer for months or years, what does it mean to make shared decisions with your health care team? How do issues of health equity and access to optimal treatment influence the ability of patients and their doctors to ensure that people can make informed choices about their treatment and care?

 

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In this Policy Consortium, we will explore the rapidly improving landscape of cancer treatment for so many patients and its impact on the shared decision making process at every critical juncture of the illness journey. We will hear the voices of patients and health care providers in three diverse communities, focusing on both the barriers to person-centered care and the opportunities building trust and true shared decision making for patients facing cancer and other diseases over long periods of time.

Agenda

12 pm - 12: 10 pm | Welcome and Introduction

Gwen Darien, Executive Vice President, Patient Advocacy, Engagement and Education
Patient Advocate Foundation & National Patient Advocate Foundation

12:10 pm – 1:10 pm | Advances in Cancer Treatment & The Ongoing Struggle for Healthcare Equity

Dr. Winn will discuss the remarkable advances that have been made in treating many forms of cancer and the opportunities that these innovations present for people facing cancer and ways in which new treatments can increase the barriers to optimal treatment for some patients and communities.

• Robert Winn, MD, Director
Virginia Commonwealth University Massey Comprehensive Cancer Center

Panel Discussion
The panel will discuss how they make shared decision making a reality in their practices and how one patient has turned her experience with triple negative breast cancer and clinical trials has made her an effective advocate for patient-centered care.

• Tammarin Collins, FNP
• George Troung, MD, Resident Physician
Harbor- University of California, Los Angeles Medical Center
• Heather Bennett Schickedanz, MD
Chair, Department of Family Medicine Harbor, University of California, Los Angeles
• Sharon Rivera Sanchez, Moderator
• Ashley Freeman, MPH, Manager, Stakeholder Outreach & Engagement
National Patient Advocate Foundation

1:10 pm – 1:55 pm | Shared Decision-Making While Living with Cancer & Other Chronic Diseases: Learning from the Community

We talk about the work we have done in the last year in three diverse communities to understand how people facing cancer and other chronic diseases make decisions at every critical juncture of their treatment journey. We will bring the voices of the people and communities we worked with to the forefront of this presentation.

• Gwen Darien, Executive Vice President, Patient Advocacy, Engagement and Education
Patient Advocate Foundation & National Patient Advocate Foundation

• Christine Wilson, MA, MS, Vice President, Advocacy Communications
Patient Advocate Foundation & National Patient Advocate Foundation

1:55 pm – 2:40 pm | Graphic Medicine: Drawing Our Way to Collaborative Care

MK Czerwiec uses graphic medicine to find innovative ways to talk about and understand how we communicate with our health care teams and make decisions about her care. She will bring her interactive approach to this presentation.

• MK Czerwiec, RN, MA, Founder
Comic Nurse

2:40 pm – 3:15 pm | Overcoming Barriers to Quality Care

It’s never enough to identify problems and obstacles. Drs. Tucker-Seeley and Frencher will talk about the positive steps we can take to make sure that every patient benefits from new therapies and patient-centered care.

• Reggie Tucker-Seeley, ScD, Principal Owner, Health Equity Strategies and Solutions
• Stanley K Frencher Jr. MD, MPH, Medical Director, Surgical Outcomes and Quality, Martin Luther King Jr Community Hospital

3:15 pm – 3:30 pm | Summary & Closing Remarks
3:30 pm | Advocates in Action Podcast Excerpt