Improving Care Coordination for Patients with Early-Onset Colorectal Cancer

By Marion Hartley, PhD

People with early-onset colorectal cancer often deal with serious health issues while still trying to build their careers and families. They need better, age-appropriate support from various types of healthcare providers, but such help isn’t yet available.

The medical community needs to work on providing this foundation, but must start by understanding what younger cancer patients need and want, and then ensure they can find it easily and in a timely manner. The Ruesch Center has recently begun funding a study by a research team led by one of our rising stars, Dr. Brenna Mossman, who intends to do just that.

This study will assess how patients with early-onset CRC perceive their care management. To do this, the team will interview a group of patients aged < 50 years about the coordination of their care, categorizing and analyzing their responses in a manner that allows the team to discover patterns and insights across their experiences. The team will then survey a larger group of these individuals to determine what kind of help and support would work best for them in the future and how they would like to receive it.

Eventually, Dr. Mossman hopes her interview and survey findings can be put into practice and improve the care of patients with EOCRC, including their symptom management. Her dream is to make clinical care more relevant to this age group, ensuring they feel understood and can easily access what they need when they need it.