Overview on Patient Centricity Archives - Youth Cancer Europe (YCE)
Hailing from Israel, Guy was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s lymphoma at a young age. Cancer free for 9 years, he was recently elected to represent Youth Cancer Europe as part of its board. In this interview, Guy talks about the importance of an organisation such as YCE to help improve the quality of treatment and after care for young adults affected by cancer across the continent.

A fresh new patient-led study was published on the 5th of October 2017 in Frontiers in Pharmacology (IF4.4), the most cited open-access journal of its kind. The Overview on Patient Centricity in Cancer Care (S. Narbutas et al.) reviews 20 clinical cancer guidelines and showcases the results of patient organisations surveyed in eighteen countries on four continents.

Our verdict is clear: patients’ preferences and values are not properly captured in health technology assessment (HTA) and in clinical guidelines.

– Sarunas Narbutas, YCE Co-Founder

The study explains:

Patient experience, emotional support and convenience of care were relatively neglected fields in the reviewed guidelines. Patient engagement was rarely presented in the guideline development phase.” and goes on to say “Even if patient-centricity is a leading paradigm in cancer policy, based on our research it is not yet standard practice to include patients or patient organisations at all appropriate levels of decision-making processes that are related to their health and well-being. Patient engagement should be an integral part of cancer care decision-making.”  

View the full article here: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fphar.2017.00698/full or click here to download a PDF version.