What's New at the Decatur Community Partnership

By the end of June, Decatur has conducted workshops with 304 community leaders and 190 healthcare professionals. We’ve given multiply presentations reaching over 750 people! The visibility of ENACCT and cancer clinical trials continues to grow. The strides we are making in the healthcare setting are quite significant. Recently a primary care physician said “I need to be more aggressive in explaining the facts of a patient receiving the minimum of standard care.” Reminding professionals we’re finding the new standard of care through clinical trials really seems to resonate in their minds. Excitement about giving patients another option has definitely begun to spread.

In June we took part in the 8th Annual Walking the Walk of Diversity Conference at Richland Community College. There were approximately 250 people in attendance. This gave us the opportunity to talk to a smaller group about why clinical trials are so important especially for minority populations.

During this quarter we were also blessed to meet a local community leader that has opened up the doors for many more opportunities to reach out to the African American population locally. He was very instrumental in organizing a presentation at a community church for 29 people.

The Strategy team has continued their efforts in working towards eliminating local barriers to cancer clinical trial participation. After doing our research we found our hands were tied in regards to changing the length of the informed consent. We’ve been in talks with the six sigma department at Decatur Memorial Hospital to see where they can help us lay out a strategic plan for making an impact on these issues.