CancerCare Comments on Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel Initiative
One of the 10 strategic initiatives recommended by the Cancer Moonshot Blue Ribbon Panel, a Network for Patient Engagement, seeks to provide large scale patient participation through comprehensive tumor profiling. Its objective is to aggregate and analyze vast amounts of scientific data leading to molecular matches with precision therapies, thus enhancing patients’ access to promising clinical trials. If successful, this initiative could transform research and ultimately integrate the latest therapeutic advances into everyday care.
Importantly however, success will depend on engaging patients, not just their tumors.
As noted by Dr. Edith Mitchell in a video from the Blue Ribbon Panel Report, cultural competence will be essential to engage diverse patients; so will transparent and carefully tailored messaging that reaches and personally engages patients where ever they are, both rationally and emotionally. Comprehensive tumor profiling will only become a reality if we focus on the individuals whose bodies harbor the tumors we’re so eager to access.