CANCER PATIENTS ALLIANCE

Cancer Patients Alliance aims to ensure that everyone, regardless of barriers, health disparities and the local unavailability of cancer care for low-income people, has equal access to treatment and care for cancer in Monterey County, CA, especially among Salinas Valley’s low-income, Latino and farmworker communities. Over the next three to five years, Cancer Patients Alliance is working to accomplish this by striving to achieve the following goals:

1. Barriers to accessing cancer treatment are overcome by Cancer Patients Alliance’s targeted advocacy and assistance in navigating the healthcare system to locate treatment when little is available for low-income community members.
2. Cancer patients, their families and at-risk patients are able to make informed decisions about cancer treatment and care for improved cancer outcomes as a result of receiving accessible and understandable information from Cancer Patients Alliance, enabling patients to partner with their medical providers.
3. Ensure a thorough understanding of patients’ true needs among healthcare providers, ranging from doctors to institutions, through Cancer Patients Alliance elevating patients’ voices and fostering collaborations.
4. System-wide cancer treatment and care options for low-income patients are greatly expanded with new approaches and solutions due to Cancer Patients Alliance’s advocacy efforts.
5. Make certain that community members access existing services and resources by continuing to engage the community and build trust in our community of Salinas Valley low-income Latinos and farmworkers.

Cancer Patients Alliance (CPA) is a community-based organization that, through our work addressing health disparities and enabling patients and their families to become active partners in their cancer care, has garnered the trust of the most disenfranchised of us in our community, low-income Latinos and farmworkers, to improve cancer outcomes for these community members.

To this strategy, CPA brings the credibility of a Science Board of world-renowned oncologists that, coupled with our independence as a nonprofit, has enabled us to foster and cultivate long-standing relationships with local healthcare providers, large and small, while speaking as patients. We have achieved our successes through traditional and non-traditional public health methods to work with, and hear from, target populations, to establish resources, and to present a serious call-to-action to the medical community, enabling an individual to move from cancer patient to cancer survivor.

Cancer Patients Alliance’s key strategies are multi-faceted in order to address cancer treatment and care barriers and problems that have seemed to be intractable for years. Cancer Patients Alliance works with individual cancer patients who come to us daily because they have no other options to receive cancer treatment and care. CPA engages the community and builds trust by going into the neighborhoods and fields where people live and work to offer help when they think none exists and to elevate patients’ voices.

At the same time, Cancer Patients Alliance works with healthcare providers and the healthcare system to improve the situation for people with cancer, ranging from obtaining treatment for individuals to advocating for system wide changes and policy changes. CPA has built coalitions of providers concerned about cancer care to collaborate to find solutions, collaborations that previously did not occur. And, Cancer Patients Alliance partners with top research institutions, especially Stanford University at CPA’s invitation, to seek optimal cancer care and new resources and strategies for the community.

Cancer Patients Alliance was founded in 2001 in Monterey County by a concerned group of patients, physicians and community members who were alarmed by the lack of sufficient, reliable information for cancer patients that would enable them to partner in their medical care. Today, Cancer Patients Alliance (CPA) benefits from a local, active Board of Directors and from a Science Board of world-renowned oncologists that assists CPA in staying up to date on the latest scientific knowledge about cancer treatment and care.

In recent years, our Board of Directors determined we must focus on cancer care racial equity locally, to bridge the gap from cancer patient to survivor, building on our experience in innovative community approaches with organizations and health providers that engage the community to address disparities in cancer care.

Thus, CPA’s current programs all center in our community of focus ranging across increasing racial diversity in cancer clinical trials for Latinx patients, to preparing cancer patients/families to become active partners in their medical care to a 2019 Stanford University partnership for Latinx/farmworkers “Reducing Cancer Disparities Through Innovative Community-Academic Partnership to Advance Access and Delivery of Precision Medicine in Monterey County.” We see daily how disparities in healthcare lead to poor health outcomes as we work in one of our programs with up to 500 Latinx cancer patients annually to strategize how they can obtain cancer treatment where almost none exists for them.

Central to CPA’s success is our workforce of dedicated bicultural, tricultural, bilingual and trilingual staff who live and work in the communities we serve, some have worked in the fields or are one generation away. Our staff members are deeply embedded in the Salinas Valley community, understand the importance of strengthening connections, and of word of mouth communication and they recognize the necessity of continual contact to further trust. For just one of our projects, 25 part-time staff members completed 130,000 resident door-to-door encounters in the Salinas Valley. Many of these door-to-door encounters have required follow-up as our staff is committed to helping their community and persevered. Among these staff members are individuals who worked part-time for CPA since they work in the agricultural fields as their main jobs.

CPA’s work and history is rooted in elevating the voices of our community of low-income Latinx agricultural workers, families and community not included in discussions when local healthcare systems are making decisions that affect them. CPA is a unique mix of a patients’ organization focused on Latinos’ (especially farmworkers) racial equity in cancer coupled with a science/medical focus - we collaborate with, and partner on, projects with scientific institutions such as Stanford University and rely on serious cancer research in our work.

Recognizing the extent of need for cancer treatment locally, as little exists for low-income people, CPA created new options and programs to prevent patients with cancer from going untreated. While tacking the problem at many levels, CPA saw the need to establish 1:1 bilingual advocacy to help individual Latinx and farmworkers access cancer treatment, critical as local cancer treatment options are thin for low-income people and cancer care is complicated. Consistently, over 95% of almost 500 patients CPA serves yearly had their difficult problems successfully resolved.

Also, CPA:
• increased cancer clinical trials participation for Latinx patients,
• prepares patients to partner in their care with credible, understandable information online & in person,
• ran a 24-hour bilingual cancer hotline,
• initiated cancer screening in local clinics for Latinx,
• created a free weekly bilingual cancer clinic.

To bring about positive change for local cancer patients through creating new solutions, improving cancer diagnosis, treatment and care and educating providers about patients’ real needs, CPA has successfully created new alliances of community members, patients, nonprofits, health organizations, local ag firms and others. CPA brought together, for first time, Stanford University, Natividad Medical Center, Clinica de Salud del Valle de Salinas, Salinas Valley Health, American Cancer Society, Central Coast Center for Independent Living and Community Hospital of the Monterey Peninsula to form Salinas Valley Alliance for Cancer. CPA continues to expand its partnerships.

Most recently, CPA:
• Piloted a multi-year policy-focused project, Salinas Valley Alliance for Cancer Care Equity, to address health disparities for Latinx, bringing in a rich array of community partners. CPA is finalizing a video that tells the stories of community members and their difficulties obtaining cancer treatment to inform policymakers.
• Recruited 25 new bilingual, bicultural Community Health Advocates and trained them in cancers affecting Latinos and local healthcare resources.
• Served as a key community partner in providing enhanced family history and genetic testing to identify those at high-risk for cancer and for Latinx patients diagnosed with cancer. Those identified at-risk received special screenings.
• Reached 46,000 houses door-to-door in 1 year in the most under-resourced local zip codes resulting in tens of thousands of referrals and increased by 8 times the number of people signed up for medical services.

In the near future, in addition to current programs, CPA is spearheading many exciting new projects to solve the problem of obtaining cancer treatment and care for low-income Latinx. One upcoming project will employ innovative advanced technology to measure where patients’ needs can best be addressed. Another takes advantage of CPA’s unique position as a community-based nonprofit partnering with academic institutions and the local private sector.