Alexandre Chan, President Elect of The Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC), Associate Editor-in-Chief at Supportive Care in Cancer, Founding Chair and Professor of Clinical Pharmacy Practice at UCI School of Pharmacy & Pharmaceutical Sciences, shared a post on LinkedIn:
“With growing evidence and interest in integrative oncology modalities for cancer supportive care, The Multinational Association of Supportive Care in Cancer (MASCC) and the Society for Integrative Oncology jointly evaluated the barriers to implementing these modalities in practice.
Bottomline: Lack of knowledge, lack of insurance coverage/out-of-pocket costs, and lack of proper referral pathways remain to be the biggest challenges that practicing clinicians are facing.
Overcoming these barriers demands work at every level. System and policy reform matters, but so does what happens individually, between clinicians and patients.
MASCC is dedicating much effort to address these practice disparities. We have recently started a new study group on Lifestyle Medicine/Integrative Oncology headed by Judith Lacey and Nicolas Hart, and our Disparity Committee headed by Enrique Soto Perez de Celis and Changchuan (Charles) Jiang are also exploring new strategies to overcoming access barriers to supportive care.
I’m grateful to the leadership of both MASCC and SIO for sustaining this valuable partnership.
And thanks Reem Nasr and Dalia Kagramanov, from UC Irvine School of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences for leading the analysis of the survey data.”
Title: Barriers to recommendation of integrative oncology modalities in supportive care: a MASCC/SIO survey
Authors: Alexandre Chan, Dalia Kagramanov, Reem Nasr, Chioma Asuzu, Ting Bao, Yin Ting Cheung, Jung Hye Kwon, Judith Lacey, Richard Lee, Maryam Lustberg, Beatrice Ohaeri, Santosh Rao, Enrique Soto-Perez-de-Celis, Claudia Witt, Ana Maria Lopez
Read the Full Article on Supportive Care in Cancer
Other posts featuring Alexandre Chan on OncoDaily.