Advancing HOPE: overcoming barriers to achieve patient equity in lung cancer care in China
We aim to support projects that address critical gaps in lung cancer diagnosis and treatment, with a focus on improving equitable healthcare for lung cancer patients and optimizing the precision diagnosis and treatment journey for NSCLC patients in China. For example, patients who may not be receiving optimal care due to their age, socioeconomic background, or geographic care setting (i.e., patients in less economically developed areas without access to a reference cancer center/hospital) would benefit from establishing a national diagnosis and treatment improvement network to comprehensively improve the capacity of different level centers.
Projects may include diverse areas such as:
- Build patient and family awareness and education through health workers, especially in rural care.
- Enhance primary healthcare workers’ knowledge of lung cancer presentations and workups.
- Strengthen partnerships with medical oncology, pathology, pulmonologists, surgeons, radiologists, and their teams to create multidisciplinary teams and tumor boards to streamline diagnostic and treatment pathways.
- Focus on implementation science and quality improvement to accelerate optimizing treatment protocols to provincial and primary healthcare hospitals.
- Support competency-based advanced knowledge and skill curriculum for lung cancer oncologists, pathologists, radiologists, thoracic surgeons, and pulmonary physicians.
- Leverage the role of technology such as AI, ChatGPT, WeChat, healthcare apps, and telehealth.
- Promote shared decision-making (SDM) between doctors, patients, and families by improving understanding of key decision factors, providing education, and applying decision aids.