The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) is forging ahead with its COA Patient Advocacy Network (CPAN), says Rose Gerber, director of patient advocacy for COA. The network’s major focuses include increasing its presence and making it easier for community practices to get involved.
The Community Oncology Alliance (COA) is forging ahead with its COA Patient Advocacy Network (CPAN), says Rose Gerber, director of patient advocacy for COA. The network’s major focuses include increasing its presence and making it easier for community practices to get involved.
Transcript (slightly modified)
How do you expect COA’s Patient Advocacy Network (CPAN) to evolve?
We’ve built a fantastic foundation with CPAN. We have a national presence where we’ve partnered with a lot of national organizations. We’ve had a physical presence at state society meetings. We’ve definitely created awareness of who CPAN is. We’ve had success in building some state-based chapters at a lot of our community practices, but now to go forward, we’re referring to ourselves now as CPAN 2.0.
What we’re doing is we’re really going to embrace social media going forward. We’re going to try to standardize more events, make it easier for our practices to get involved. We do recognize that not every community practice has the resources or the bandwidth to actually start a CPAN chapter, so we’re offering many different ways for individuals to get involved in what we’ll term CPAN Light. So, there might be an opportunity for an individual to get involved, or an entire practice.
We’re really going to be pulling a lot of resources in. A very significant partnership will be with the IM Community Oncology Campaign, so as you may know, this is a very important initiative for COA, and CPAN is going to be a big part of that. It will have certain features, like we will have COA TV in a lot of our community practices. We’ll have features like the Cancer Policy Minute, and as we’re doing that, at the same time, we’ll be building our CPAN base and we’re using the term “army of advocates,” because that’s really what we’re trying to do.
What are the short-term and long-term goals for CPAN?
The short-term goal is to get more chapters involved, to really demonstrate the value, what is the value of CPAN. When I get asked that question, I say, “Your patients can be a voice for you. They can be your advocate.”
The long-term goal is to hopefully have some type of recognition in as many states as possible. Unfortunately, there’s never going to be a CPAN presence in all 50 states because there’s not community oncology in all 50 states. We’re hoping to be as inclusive as possible and to continue to grow so that every cancer survivor has the education to advocate for the preservation of community cancer care.
Need for Pharmacogenomic Testing in Mental Health Care Explored at AMCP 2024
April 17th 2024Presenters from Mayo Clinic discussed the benefits of implementing pharmacogenomic testing in mental health care for the betterment of patient outcomes, reducing medical costs, and more at the Academy of Managed Care Pharmacy (AMCP) 2024 annual meeting.
Read More
Oncology Onward: A Conversation With Penn Medicine's Dr Justin Bekelman
December 19th 2023Justin Bekelman, MD, director of the Penn Center for Cancer Care Innovation, sat with our hosts Emeline Aviki, MD, MBA, and Stephen Schleicher, MD, MBA, for our final episode of 2023 to discuss the importance of collaboration between academic medicine and community oncology and testing innovative cancer care delivery in these settings.
Listen
The Importance of Examining and Preventing Atrial Fibrillation
August 29th 2023At this year’s American Society for Preventive Cardiology Congress on CVD Prevention, Emelia J. Benjamin, MD, ScM, delivered the Honorary Fellow Award Lecture, “The Imperative to Focus on the Prevention of Atrial Fibrillation,” as the recipient of this year’s Honorary Fellow of the American Society for Preventive Cardiology award.
Listen
CMS Leaders Describe Their Partnership to Align Programs, Address ACOs’ Concerns
April 11th 2024As CMS’ suite of value-based and accountable care models evolves, leaders from across the agency detailed how they are working together to streamline quality reporting and encourage the move to a population health mindset while addressing providers’ concerns.
Read More