Patient Navigation (PN) was started by Harold Freeman to address the problem of high mortality rates among African-American women with breast cancer. While the concept caught on and many institutions and organizations were augmenting outreach activities or replacing lay health workers with patient navigators, few studies had demonstrated a benefit of PN in the health care setting in the way Dr. Freeman envisioned PN to work – ie to assist patients to receive needed medical care when they entered the facility. In 2006, the National Cancer Institute, Center to Reduce Cancer Health Disparities, with additional support from the American Cancer Society, funded 10 sites across the United States to test PN in reducing delay after an abnormal breast, cervical, colorectal, or prostate cancer test/exam or a cancer diagnosis. The Patient Navigation Research Program (PNRP) recruited over 12,000 patients from many different setting and populations groups. The results of the PNRP, whether examined by site or in a meta-analysis demonstrated that PN reduced the number of patients lost to follow-up and in some cases reduced the time to resolution of abnormalities [1-4]. For patients with cancer, an analysis of individual patients indicted that PN reduced the time to the start of treatment after 90 days [4].

This presentation will review the design of the PNRP, describe the participants and settings, and review the findings from the meta-analysis for time to resolution after an abnormal test and time to the start of treatment for those diagnosed with cancer. The results support the use of PN in healthcare settings to reduce disparities and improve the receipt of quality health care. These results could help strengthen funding for the provision of PN as described in the Affordable Care Act and mandated in 2015 by the American College of Surgeons.

References:

1. Paskett ED, Katz ML, Post DM, Pennell ML, Young GS, Seiber EE, et al. The Ohio Patient Navigation Research Program: does the American Cancer Society patient navigation model improve time to resolution in patients with abnormal screening tests? Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21:1620-1628.

2. Battaglia TA, Bak SM, Heeren T, et al. Boston patient navigation research program: the impact of navigation on time to diagnostic resolution after abnormal cancer screening. Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2012;21:1645-1654.

3. Lee JH, Fulp W, Wells KJ, Meade CD, Calcano E, Roetzheim R. (2014). Effect of patient navigation on time to diagnostic resolution among patients with colorectal cancer-related abnormalities. J Cancer Edu 2014;29:144-150.

4. Freund KM, Battaglia TA, Calhoun E, et al. Impact of patient navigation on timely cancer care: the Patient Navigation Research Program. J Natl Cancer Inst 2014;106:1-9.

Citation Format: Electra D. Paskett. Updates from the Patient Navigation Research Program: Evidence of the effectiveness. [abstract]. In: Proceedings of the Seventh AACR Conference on The Science of Health Disparities in Racial/Ethnic Minorities and the Medically Underserved; Nov 9-12, 2014; San Antonio, TX. Philadelphia (PA): AACR; Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2015;24(10 Suppl):Abstract nr IA33.

©2015 American Association for Cancer Research.
2015