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Featured Healthcare Teams Grantees
The researchers highlighted below have been funded through the Notice of Special Interest entitled, "Research on Interprofessional Teamwork and Coordination During Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment"
within the Healthcare Delivery Research program or include a focus on teaming principles and care coordination processes. Read below to learn more about their projects.
Examples of NCI-supported research related to
Healthcare Teams & Teamwork Processes in Cancer Care Delivery
TEAMSPORT to Community TEAMSPORT: Validating and Adapting a Precision Oncology Reflex Testing Team Intervention to Reduce Rural Disparities in Cancer Care Delivery
R01 CA274560Shellie Ellis
University of Kansas Medical Center
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Public Health Statement
Each year >500,000 Americans diagnosed with cancer have tumors that could be targeted with an FDA-approved drug to treat their disease more effectively. However, there is wide variation in use of these treatments in clinical practice. Rural patients, who are more likely to die from cancer than their non-rural counterparts, are less likely to receive targeted cancer therapies and could benefit greatly from interventions to address this quality gap.
A Type I Hybrid Effectiveness-Implementation Trial to Evaluate a Navigation-Based Multilevel Intervention to Decrease Delays Starting Adjuvant Therapy Among Patients with Head and Neck Cancer
R01 CA282165Evan Graboyes
Medical University of South Carolina
Principal Investigator
Public Health Relevance
For patients with head and neck cancer, delays starting adjuvant radiation therapy are common, disproportionately burden racial minorities, and contribute to poor survival and racial disparities in mortality. However, effective therapies to improve the delivery of timely, equitable, guideline-adherent adjuvant radiation therapy are lacking. We have developed a navigation-based multilevel intervention to enhance care coordination, communication, and key cancer care delivery processes that could provide the first effective treatment in this population, thereby improving survival, decreasing racial disparities in outcomes, and developing new standards of clinical care.
Improving cancer health equity by targeting physician networks
R37 CA263936Erika Moen
Darthmouth College
Principal Investigator
Public Health Relevance
A key objective in efforts to reduce cancer health disparities is standardizing access to care. This proposal aims to develop a novel physician network-based measure characterizing access to specialist cancer care and investigate how this knowledge can be used to reduce rural, racial, and socioeconomic disparities in patient outcomes for breast, colorectal, and lung cancer patients. We will use these results to bridge theory and practice by developing a data-driven algorithm that would deliver to health systems approaches for establishing more robust physician networks and improve patient outcomes.
Dyadic Intervention to Improve Patient-Family Caregiver Team-Based Management of the Medical Regimen after Allogenetic Hematopoietic Cell Transplantation
R01 CA268004Donna Posluszny
University of Pittsburgh
Principal Investigator
Public Health Relevance
Allogeneic hematopoietic cell transplantation (HCT) is an increasingly prevalent lifesaving treatment option for hematologic cancer patients. After HCT, patients and their family caregivers must work together as a team to adhere to the complex post-HCT medical regimen, which is critical for good patient health outcomes. The proposed work is a refinement and test of a novel, brief Problem-Solving Intervention to improve patient-family caregiver team management of the medical regimen and thus improve patient and family caregiver emotional well-being and health-related quality of life.
IMProving Adherence to Colonoscopy through Teams and Technology (IMPACTT)
R01 CA271031Urmimala Sarkar
University of California, San Francisco
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Public Health Relevance
Complete and timely colonoscopy after an abnormal stool-based colorectal cancer screening test results in early detection, cancer prevention, and reduction in mortality, but follow-up in safety-net health systems occurs in less than 50% at 6 months. The proposal will implement multi-level approach consisting of a stepped-wedge clinic- level intervention of team-based best practices co-developed with primary and specialty care, a patient-level technology intervention to provide enhanced instructions and navigation to complete diagnostic colonoscopy, and a mixed methods evaluation to explore multi-level factors contributing to intervention outcomes. Developing a solution to this high-risk and diverse population has the potential to translate to other health systems, support patient self-management, and address other patient conditions.
SMART Cancer Care Teams: Enhancing EHR Communication to Improve Interprofessional Teamwork
R01 CA273058Shin-Ping Tu
University of California at Davis
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Public Health Relevance
Cancer continues to rank as the second leading cause of death in the US. We propose to study how teamwork, specifically communication and information sharing among large numbers of healthcare professionals, impact their patients’ outcome.