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| Quality Care Initiative |
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NBCCF has launched a Quality Care Initiative to improve the quality of breast cancer care in this country. This issue is and will continue to be one of the most important and challenging issues facing breast cancer activists.
NBCCF's Quality Care Initiative aims to increase access to and improve the quality of breast cancer care for everyone. The initiative is guided by NBCCF's patient-centered, evidence-based vision of quality care, described in our Position Statement on Quality Breast Cancer Care . NBCCF's vision is of six overlapping core values:
Related Programs: Guide to Quality Breast Cancer Care - This unique resource is for individuals facing breast cancer and breast cancer advocates. It describes our patient-centered, evidence-based vision of quality breast cancer care, provides strategies for getting quality care in a flawed health care system, and serves as a blueprint for quality improvement efforts. NBCCF created a poster describing our collaborative approach to creating the Guide. To view it, click here. This poster is in Adobe Acrobat format. If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, click here to download it for free. NBCCF's extraordinarily successful Guide to Quality Breast Cancer Care is available to view for free online here. This online version is the NEW! 3rd edition with updated information for 2006! How to Get Good Care for Breast Cancer - This short booklet is easy to read and easy to pick up. It uses a welcoming conversational style between a newly diagnosed breast cancer patient and a breast cancer advocate. The booklet contains essential messages about quality care and focuses on empowering patients to ask questions and learn about evidence-based care. This booklet has been very successful as well, and is available for free in Adobe Acrobat format by clicking here. (If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, click here to download it for free.) To obtain a free print version of this booklet, call toll-free (866) 624-5307. Como obtener la mejor atencion medica para el cancer del seno - This is a Spanish adaptation of the booklet How to Get Good Care for Breast Cancer and is also available for free download by clicking here (If you do not have Adobe Acrobat, click here to obtain it for free.) To order a free print version of this booklet, call toll-free (877) 486-8322. We are grateful to the Council of Fashion Designers of America and its campaign, Fashion Targets Breast Cancer, for providing generous funding for How to Get Good Care for Breast Cancer and Como obtener la mejor atencion medica para el cancer del seno. Quality Care Project LEAD® - NBCCF will hold its next Quality Care Project LEAD® course November 4-8, 2009 in Virginia. Quality Care Project LEAD® has already trained more than 100 breast cancer activists about what quality breast cancer care is and how to improve the quality of breast cancer care in their communities. Learn how you can get more involved in systems change toward improving the quality of breast cancer care for everyone.
In addition to these programs, NBCCF also educates and trains breast cancer patients and advocates through NBCCF newsletter articles, plenary sessions and workshops at our Annual Advocacy Training Conference, participation in external meetings, letters to the editors of prominent publications and collaborations with other organizations. 2. Influencing health care providers to embrace and implement NBCCF's vision of quality care. Related programs: Measuring What Matters Project - Meaningful measures that are consistently used and publicly reported could have an enormous impact on the quality of breast cancer care in this country. But existing measures for breast cancer care do not adequately address the questions that are most important. There are a number of efforts right now to increase, find consensus about, and better implement quality measures. As a patient-led advocacy group with an evidence-based, patient-centered vision of quality care, we have a unique and important perspective on what should be measured in breast cancer care. To address this issue, we convened a group of key stakeholders for a focused workshop to help shape the development and implementation of meaningful measures of quality care for breast cancer. The focused workshop, Measuring What Matters: Ensuring Meaningful Quality Measures in Breast Cancer, was held March 18-20, 2007 in Washington, DC. Workshop participants included leaders in the field of quality improvement, consumer advocates, health care providers, representatives of health plans, government, purchasers, and researchers. This workshop was envisioned to help move the field forward by examining existing and proposed measures, reviewing them through the lens of these core values and through the perspectives of key stakeholders. In preparation for the workshop, NBCCF oversaw a review of the literature and landscape of evidence-based quality improvement in breast cancer. We aimed to document what exists, what gaps remain, and to what extent we are measuring what truly matters. Key outcomes of the focused workshop were to: We expect our project to build on and complement other efforts in this area, such as the work of the National Quality Forum. For more information on our Measuring What Matters Project, click here . This meeting was made possible thanks to a generous grant from the Breast Cancer Fund of the National Philanthropic Trust. Beyond the Guidelines Project - Breast cancer patients need to clearly understand the issues they will be facing, and deserve readily available, unbiased, evidence-based information presented from a patient's perspective. Such information is critically important to patients as they seek to make informed medical decisions, taking into consideration potential benefits and harms as well as uncertainties. Beyond the Guidelines, a new project for 2007, will be an interactive web-based resource that equips individuals with the necessary tools to gain more leverage in the decision-making process by explaining the rationale behind clinical decisions and helping to identify gaps in clinical evidence for breast cancer care. Beyond the Guidelines will provide regularly updated information on commonly used regimens and procedures for the diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. Such information will include the rationale for the intervention, level of scientific and clinical evidence, the magnitude of demonstrated benefits and harms, a description of known side effects, and important unresolved issues and controversies related to the intervention. This project is made possible thanks to generous support from Lee National Denim Day. 3. Influencing policymakers to create a national health care system that reflects NBCC's vision and establish other policies that nurture and protect quality breast cancer care. Related programs: Grassroots Advocacy - NBCC and its national network of grassroots activists lobby members of Congress to support our Legislative Priorities. NBCC's No. #1 legislative priority is Guaranteed access to health care for all. Legislative Forums - NBCC holds a series of congressional forums on breast cancer. At each forum, experts address a specific breast cancer policy issue, present the science that drives the need for the policy and give a constituent perspective on the issue. When there are diverse views among the scientific or lay community on a particular issue, our forums present this diversity and facilitate discussion. Our goal is to help members of Congress, state legislatures and their staff acquire up-to-date information about breast cancer and to report on research discoveries that impact policy. In addition to these activities, NBCC regularly analyzes and comments on other legislation, regulations, and reports related to its quality care goals. |
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