Patient Navigation: The Path Towards Reduced Cancer Inequalities in Europe?
The increasing complexity of the healthcare landscape, particularly for diseases such as cancer, requires patient navigation to guide individuals through the system, reduce barriers, ensure timely access to essential services, improve shared decision-making and improve health literacy.
However, despite significant progress in the United States (US) and Canada over three decades, European cancer patient navigation remains fragmented with limited support and no EU-level strategy. Greater collaboration and stakeholder involvement is needed to bridge this gap and advocate for high-level commitment.
Inspired by the Canadian Nav-CARE initiative, the EU Navigate research project aims to implement and evaluate a patient-centred navigation intervention for older cancer patients, their carers and their families in different European healthcare systems.
The project consortium therefore organised a stakeholder forum to discuss the obstacles and facilitate ways of improving dialogue between stakeholders including representatives of European and international entities, as well as initiatives and projects such as My Cancer Navigator, CANCERLESS, CO-CAPTAIN, Nav-CARE, the American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) and the White House Office of the United States (US).
