Finding Health Care Best Practices From Successes Around the World

We might not always have the answers within our own walls in the US, but by looking outside to successes in other countries, we are finding new best practices to implement and improve access to care for patients who are experiencing the worst outcomes, explained Nadine J. Barrett, PhD, MA, MS, FACCC, senior associate dean for community engagement and equity in research, Wake Forest University School of Medicine and Atrium Health, and the current president of the Association of Cancer Care Centers (ACCC).

This transcript has been edited for clarity.

Transcript

Are there lessons that can be learned from other countries that are doing a good job on effectively engaging with communities to remove barriers to equitable access to cancer care?

There is so much we could learn from other countries, specifically around how to improve access to cancer care or care in general, for that matter. What was really powerful during the ACCC National Oncology Conference was Dr Kevin Fiori [of Montefiore Health System] gave an incredible talk about his own work, where he started working in Togo, Africa, creating what became a boots-on-the-ground, grassroots from the ground up, community health programs, specifically, in this case, addressing HIV.

What was really powerful in this work is that it actually led to having a whole network of community health workers from the community in various regions to ensure that people got both access to care, but they also had people that they could talk to about their cancer concerns, their HIV concerns, and any other health areas. This was really about building trusted relationships in the community with community health workers to all create the change, and he was clearly able to show the incredible impact it had in their programs. Not only did he do that, but then he brought it back here to the US and implemented the same program that really and truly informed how we could do differently here, as can through our community health work programs.

What's so powerful about that is the example that we don't always have all the answers and innovation doesn't always come from our own walls. It actually can come from learning from other countries, other societies, other communities, about what they're doing and how we can implement that to make a difference, just as he's doing that now in New Jersey. This type of conference allows for those types of engagement, that type of collaboration, those types of, “How do you actually implement the best programs possible to ensure that those who are getting the worst outcomes, getting the least access to quality care are there, are present, and we're able to make that kind of a difference?”

So yes, when we think about what global impact could be, global impact is countries learning from each other. At the ACCC meeting, we had people from Egypt, Sweden, and Nigeria, all here, sharing their experiences, co-learning together, and ultimately moving us to the next phase of where we need to be, which is making a difference locally in our communities, with global impact.

Cancer care and barriers to cancer care, we already know many of them: access in terms of cost, in terms of transportation, in terms of being able to have the quality care, even biases that exist within the health system that impact patients’ engagement in both their care and even in access to clinical research and trials. So, we know all these barriers exist, right? Beyond that, when we talk about palliative care, there's an additional burden in terms of managing the symptoms of patients that we know plays a huge part in their own health outcomes and being able to access palliative care in the same way as others.