Airbnb: Open Homes Platform Medical Stays

Airbnb will expand their Open Homes platform to include medical stays, allowing hosts in the United States and around the world to open their homes for free to those traveling for medical treatment or respite. Airbnb’s mission is to help create a world where anyone can belong anywhere, and the goal of Open Homes is to extend belonging to those in the greatest need. Prior to today’s commitment, Open Homes was available for refugee resettlement and for those displaced by natural disasters, and the company has made a commitment to house 100,000 people in need by 2022. Medical stays represent a significant expansion of this program and will further contribute to this goal. Many people need to travel for medical reasons, and too often the cost of temporary accommodations can be a major barrier to accessing life-saving treatment or critical respite during recovery. That’s why the company will initially work with partners including Fisher House Foundation to help provide accommodations for military and veterans’ families traveling to medical facilities for critical treatment, as well as Hospitality Homes, an organization focused on short term housing solutions for patients seeking treatment in the Boston, MA area. The program will also continue to support Make-A-Wish by providing travel accommodations for wishes, which offer children and their families a joyful respite from their battle with critical illnesses. Airbnb will pilot the medical stays program with these initial partners, with the eventual goal to onboard more partners both domestically and abroad to expand the impact.

ALK Positive: Oncogene Collaboration Initiative

The lung cancer patient advocacy group, ALK Positive, along with additional lung cancer patient advocacy groups, have joined forces to create the Oncogene Collaboration Initiative (OCI). The OCI is committed to aligning the necessary partners to build an educational platform to bridge current gaps in awareness, testing, and treatment for lung cancer patients

.  OCI collaborators include the American Cancer Society (ACS), the National Lung Cancer Roundtable (NLCRT) and biomarker/genomic testing experts.  Lung Cancer is a highly stigmatized disease and the number one cancer killer in the United States, killing 450 patients per day in the US alone. Eighty-five percent of lung cancer patients are diagnosed with non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The OCI represents NSCLC patients who possess a targeted gene mutation for which an FDA-approved targeted therapy is currently available. Many of the individuals with a specific gene mutation that is amenable to targeted therapy have never smoked. However, many of these lung cancer patients are dying prematurely due to the failure of receiving guideline-adherent biomarker genetic testing and effective treatments.  It is vital that all NSCLC patients benefit from existing life altering diagnostic testing and treatment. Lung cancer is a national crisis that has created a sense of urgency to bring about a unique collaboration between patient advocacy groups and lung cancer organizations to connect the dots between education, research and the thousands of patients suffering from this terrible disease.

CANCER101 & Health Collaboratory:  Health
Untangled™ / Learning Preference Barometer*

Driven by the mission to improve the patient experience and building upon the advent of patient access to data, CANCER 101 and the Health Collaboratory are taking that a step further to ensure patients understand their data by launching Health Untangled™, a platform co-designed with patients, to allow them to better understand key components of health such as laboratory values and genetics, using interactive data visualization methodology.. The goal is to unravel the mysteries of health and address the confusion and complexities in healthcare by personalizing the educational experience and translating health data to activate patients to make informed decisions. With touch points at over 1,200 hospitals, community practices and patient advocacy organizations, Health Untangled™ and the Learning Preference Barometer will engage over 100,000 patients and their care partners to understand their healthcare data activating them to partner with healthcare teams to make informed medical decisions.

In an effort to personalize the educational journey, they will also launch the Learning Preference Barometer to help determine learning styles to allow for communication and tools to be tailored based on personal preferences of patients. Cancer101 will conduct a research study in collaboration with Moffitt Cancer Center, they will conduct a research study where they will integrate the Learning Preference Barometer into a trial exploring visual health education, a major step towards personalizing oncology education tools. The tool may also be tested in in practice at Perlmutter Cancer Center at NYU Langone.

This commitment builds on the announcement of Prescription to Learn® (P2L), as part of the Cancer Moonshot, which launched over 1200 hospitals and community practices, in 8 disease states with plans to expand to 10 disease states by the end of 2018. Since the launch the platform has been redesigned with patient and caregiver feedback to create a trusted ecosystem that helps patients navigate their healthcare from prevention, through symptom identification, through a new diagnosis and long-term survivorship. CANCER101 has developed a mechanism for patients and caregivers to filter resources by learning style has integrated Prescription to Learn into medical education curriculum, enabling clinicians to prescribe resources to patients.

CancerAid

Together with Cedars-Sinai Health System, CancerAid announces a new initiative that will be made available to select cancer patients, allowing better management of their cancer journey by improving engagement, adherence and activation in their care. Selected patients will receive the CancerAid app and remote monitoring devices (Bluetooth scale for tracking weight; Apple Watch for tracking exercise); CancerAid Coaching Sessions (over 6 weeks) and ongoing educational video lessons (over 6 weeks). CancerAid will utilize this program to validate the feasibility, efficacy, and adoption of CancerAid As A Service (CAAS); and will improve the sessions based on adoption and engagement of recipients. CancerAid has secured $1.9 million seed investment to date.

Cancer Beast: Gene sequencing education for
firefighters

Cancer Beast LLC is working to have gene sequencing as a standard of care for all cancer patients. The organization advocates for greater patient involvement, tissue donation to assist cancer researchers, and education in schools. To accelerate research and provide sequencing to all cancer patients, the team is committed to expand community outreach by partnering with a number of fire departments, fire-related non-profit’s, hospitals, and government agencies. Together with their support and community efforts, Cancer Beast is spreading the word on the importance of establishing a patient network and encouraging people to participant in programs like the National Institute of Health’s “All of Us” program and will develop a campaign to support the National Human Genome Research Institutes April 25, 2019 “National DNA Day” in fire stations and schools.

Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation: BT Buddies

The Children’s Brain Tumor Foundation announces the launch of a new program, BT Buddies, to build a peer support community with the goal of increasing self-esteem and independence. The majority of teen and young adult brain tumor survivors feel socially isolated and are unable to successfully make peer connections. This often results in decreased independence and impacts academic performance and employment. Peer mentors have been trained and identified and will be linked to survivors who have self-identified or through assessment have been recognized as socially isolated. Mentors will continue to provide peer support for the next 12 months with monthly chats to determine effectiveness and community needs.

Colorectal Cancer Alliance: Patient & Family Journey
Initiative

The Colorectal Cancer Alliance’s Patient & Family Journey Initiative announces that it will double the number of patients the Alliance is able to reach to 250,000 by 2020 without hiring additional patient navigators. The initiative will feature an interactive experience on the Alliance’s website that will utilize visitors’ inputs to navigate them more quickly and efficiently to the most-needed and most-relevant information and services to support their personal journey. In the model of user-friendly, personalized experiences offered by companies such as TurboTax and Carfax, the Patient & Family Journey will revolutionize the way patients and their loved ones are connected to colorectal cancer care resources.

Evergreen Exhibitions: Unlocking Cancer

Evergreen Exhibitions, one of the largest traveling museum exhibit companies serving science centers and natural history museums worldwide announces, “Unlocking Cancer”, a new groundbreaking national touring museum exhibition about cancer.

The national touring museum exhibition will provide timely information about cancer and will contribute to public understanding of the science behind cancer, the different ways it impacts lives, and advances and technologies that will help us fight cancer today and tomorrow. Additional public education goals include creating a favorable and sustainable change in the level of scientific knowledge and cancer awareness and increasing the overall comfort level among families in discussing cancer. Designed for entire families and with outreach to educators, schools, and communities, the exhibition will be accessible, inspirational, and meaningful. The public will learn about actionable steps they can take to prevent certain types of cancer, current and reliable cancer diagnoses and treatments, and the science and people behind the fight toward its eradication.

Family Reach

AbbVie announces its $5 million donation to Family Reach to bolster its efforts to alleviate the financial burdens of cancer for families facing a pediatric cancer diagnosis. This is the largest donation in Family Reach’s history that will allow the nonprofit to expand to an additional 25 hospitals in 25 states across the country, enhancing access to comprehensive tools and supporting programs to an estimated 4,400 additional families. With this support, Family Reach will train and add 125 hospital based social workers, resource navigators & nurse navigators to the Family Reach network, expanding its reach to an additional 200,000 people within two years. AbbVie’s donation will provide critical financial support to empower families at hospitals and cancer centers in communities without access to robust support programs, reducing disparities in financial support and interventions. The collaboration is grounded in the belief that a patient’s chance of overcoming cancer should never be jeopardized by financial barriers.

Lyft: Revolutionize transportation services for patients*

Lyft commits to reduce the healthcare transportation gap by fifty percent by 2020. And soon after, eliminate transportation barriers to healthcare altogether. 3.6 million Americans miss their medical appointments due to a lack of transportation. Poor appointment adherence in the US is one of the leading causes of lower care quality and unsatisfactory patient experience resulting in serious implications for patients and costing the healthcare system over $150B. To help solve this issue, Lyft will continue to invest in the entire healthcare ecosystem, by providing solutions that enable partners to remove transportation barriers, to allow them to do what they do best: provide great care. Lyft will keep evolving their services until no one in this country ever misses out on critical care because they can’t get a ride. Major partners include the American Cancer Society and Ronald McDonald House, to leverage the Lyft platform and make transportation easier and more accessible for those that need it the most. Lyft also partner with thousands of healthcare organizations, including healthcare transportation brokers, health systems, payers, and EHR companies.

Take Action Against Cancer

Take Action Against Cancer announces the launch of a new, collaborative community of cancer widows and their families, turning grief into action. The goal is to mobilize cancer widows to engage in the fight against cancer in multiple ways: by raising awareness, fundraising for research, advocating for prevention, and supporting cancer patients. Take Action Against Cancer was created by a brain cancer widow in Seattle and is recruiting partners from the cancer community and the widowed community to collaborate, participate, and support this effort. The group has targeted three outcomes for 2019: 1) to launch the first ever Take Action Against Cancer Day, a nationwide day of service (both in-person and online) by cancer widows and their allies, in conjunction with World Cancer Day on February 4, 2019; 2) to publish a book of collected wisdom and advice from seasoned cancer widows to those new to this path; and 3) to publish a similar book by kids and teens who have lost a parent to cancer for their peers. Take Action Against Cancer Day is targeting days of service in 5 in-person locations in 2019 and growth to 25 locations for 2020.

X4 Health: Health Records Request Wizard

X4 Health  built a framework and partnership to revolutionize health records requests for the 21st century, giving patients more control over their own data. Cancer patients shouldn’t have to jump through burdensome bureaucratic hoops on top of fighting for their lives. But right now, they do, because the health records request processes under HIPAA, the nation’s privacy law, are confusing and inefficient. That’s why X4 Health worked with patients and families to design a new way that can revolutionize medical records requests. The “Health Record Request Wizard” project, a collaboration among consumer advocates, the Commonwealth Fund, health records professionals at AHIMA and health IT experts provides a framework for moving the process into the 21st century. This is critical for cancer patients who manage care from multiple providers and track care over time. X4 Health is committed to implementation of the framework through education and partnerships with dozens of health care systems, physicians, app companies, and records management vendors. Today, X4 is releasing the prototype and an implementation package that any organization can use to replicate and build on, along with the names of several key partners committed to lowering barriers to health data access for patients and families. Those partners include the American Health Information Management Association (AHIMA), Care Journey, CARIN Alliance, Ciitizen, CIOX, Door County Medical Center, NewWave, National Partnership for Women & Families, Swellbox, Texas State University Department of Health Information Management, University of Wisconsin HIM and Technology Program and more.