Posted by Edmo Gamelin, Jeron Eaves, Harrison Liu, Erik Woodruff on May 18th, 2020.
Last year, we wrote about our charitable work with a great non-profit organization, the Addario Lung Cancer Foundation (ALCF). We’re proud to say that our work has continued with this organization. However, things have changed over the past year, as the ALCF has merged with the Lung Cancer Alliance to form the GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer. This new organization is now the “leading organization dedicated to saving, extending, and improving the lives of those vulnerable, at risk, and diagnosed with lung cancer.”
Centers of Excellence Program
Our most recent work was with the GO2 Care Continuum Centers of Excellence (CCCOE) program. This program works to ensure the best possible care in the community hospital setting, where a majority of lung cancer patients in the US are treated. Practices that meet rigorous care standards are invited to join the program. The 40+ (and growing) CCCOEs work together on an ongoing basis to generate and share best practices for treating lung cancer.
Biomarker Testing for Lung Cancer
This past December, GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer held its annual CCCOE Summit in Nashville, TN. It was well attended by multidisciplinary team members including oncologists, nurse navigators, thoracic surgeons, genetic counselors, pulmonologists, hospital administrators/cancer care directors as well as industry experts (nearly 140 attendees in total). The summit was designed to help CCCOE practices improve cancer screening and biomarker testing through a series of presentations, working sessions, and networking events. Blue Matter was invited to develop and lead a workshop focused on biomarker testing.
During the workshop, we broke summit attendees into nearly 20 groups. Each group was given the same prompt: to define the ideal state of biomarker testing in lung cancer, and to characterize barriers keeping CCCOEs from operating in the ideal state today. After tackling these questions, groups identified potential activities / initiatives that CCCOEs could initiate to help get closer to the ideal state, and opportunities for GO2 Foundation to help.
Following the workshop, Blue Matter organized and analyzed workshop outputs, creating a prioritized set of recommendations for how GO2 Foundation could support CCCOEs in improving their approach to biomarker testing moving forward. Improving rates of biomarker testing for lung cancer is a strategic priority for GO2 Foundation and a critical element to ensuring lung cancer patients have access to the most appropriate treatment options.
Just like the year before, our team is grateful to GO2 Foundation for Lung Cancer for inviting us to participate in the summit. We’re proud to help, in a small way, in the fight to improve care for lung cancer patients around the country.
