The Community Oncology Patient Education study team was formed in 2009.
We are bringing together diverse perspectives to study patient education in Mendocino County.
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Project Abstract:
People newly diagnosed with cancer in rural areas have less access to patient education than people living in urban areas. Patient education is important because it helps people gain knowledge and participate more fully in their cancer treatment decisions, which can improve psychological and physical health.
In urban areas, hospitals and other organizations have created and funded cancer resource centers. These resource centers include health libraries featuring educational materials and trained staff who can help patients learn about their condition, identify what questions to ask their doctor, and otherwise address information and other psychosocial needs.
To reduce the disparity between what is available to rural and urban residents, some rural communities are trying to replicate the urban cancer resource center model. Our academic-community partnership features the University of California, San Francisco, and the Mendocino Cancer Resource center collaborating to see if we can make the resource center model work in rural, underserved areas. In past projects, we have learned that rural communities struggle to organize and finance cancer resource centers, but that rural residents benefit.
In this project, we ask: How can we change the way rural resource centers are organized and financed? Will these changes help rural cancer resource centers to expand and sustain their deliver of patient education?
Our guiding hypothesis is that establishing business associate agreements with local cancer care providers and charging payers for services delivered will improve a rural resource center’s reach and sustainability. To address our research questions and explore our hypothesis, we are convening rural providers, payers, policy-makers, public health officials, and employers in Mendocino County. Together we will study and make changes in the way the Mendocino Cancer Resource Center is organized and financed. We will measure the resource center’s client volume and financial condition at the start, middle, and end of the project, and evaluate the trajectory of these outcomes over time and in comparison to other rural resource centers.
We will disseminate our findings through existing rural cancer resource centers, and via a nationwide network of urban resource centers interested in expanding to rural areas. Better organized and financed cancer resource centers could improve access to patient education, as well as psychological and health outcomes, in 2,051 rural counties where 100,000 new cases of cancer are diagnosed every year.