All health systems work with limited resources to some degree. The challenge faced across the globe is finding the best way to allocate those resources to help the patient population as much as possible.
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In both high- and low-income countries, the most common struggles patients with cancer face are largely the same, including financial toxicity from treatment costs, difficulty with transportation to and from appointments, and the impact of treatment on their caregivers and families. Consistently, the greatest barrier to accessing health care in many nations is a lack of insurance coverage, often driving many patients to travel hours away to large centers to get basic oncology care. All health systems work with limited resources to some degree. The challenge faced across the globe is finding the best way to allocate those resources to help the patient population as much as possible. To that end, low-income countries often find ways to reach the same outcomes as high-income countries like the US, at a fraction of the cost, shared today’s guest who has practiced medicine in both Mexico and the United States.
Guest:
Enrique Soto Pérez de Celis, MD, PhD
Associate Director for Global Oncology
University of Colorado Cancer Center
Aurora, Colorado
Quote:
“For multicultural countries like the US where people come from all over the world…[it’s important to] make sure that we are providing care that has cultural humility, that includes the values of their culture and the things that matter to patients. That’s what we should try to do: provide patients with care that is personalized to them, their values, their family, and their culture.”
Read more global perspectives from the international panelists who spoke at the October ACCC 41st National Oncology Conference in this ACCCBuzz blog.
Additional Resources:
The views and opinions expressed herein are those of the author(s)/faculty member(s) and do not reflect the official policy or position of their employer(s) or the Association of Cancer Care Centers.
