NJ's Regional Moonshot Summit

Yesterday hundreds of researchers, oncologists, advocates,  insurance and pharmaceutical industry representatives met at Howard University in DC for the Cancer Moonshot Summit.

Here in NJ running concurrently with the DC meeting we held a regional Cancer Moonshot Summit.  As in DC advocates, insurance and pharmaceutical industry representatives, oncologists and others met at the Cancer Support Community Central New Jersey (CSCCNJ) to discuss the initiative. Cancer Support Community is a partner in the Moonshot Initiative lead by VP Joe Biden. The Regional Summit was co-sponsored by Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ. This regional Summit was an excellent way for individuals to share their ideas and provide input to the  White House Cancer Moonshot Initiative.

The NJ Summit included watching VP Biden's speech from DC and a panel discussion. The panel included D. Toppmeyer, MD Rutgers Cancer Institute of NJ, U. Dugan, MD, PhD Bristol Myers Squibb, E. Levine LCSW, W. Wengel III Aetna, D. Gonzalez, US Dept of Health and Human Services and myself.

Panel participants .
Photo courtesy of @RutgersCancer

We discussed putting patients at the center - how to improve the experience of patients when initially diagnosed, after treatment as well as those treating cancer as a chronic illness as well as how to insure the information patients read online is accurate.  We also discussed the best way for oncologists in a community setting to be on top of the latest treatments and clinical trials. We ended with a short discussion of how to recruit patients to clinical trials and dispel the myths associated with clinical trials.

I was honored to be a part of this initiative. I am usually the one Tweeting from conferences but multitasking at this event was a bit of a challenge. So I share this Tweet with you. 

Regional #CancerMoonshot summit: Dee Sparacio patient advoc. & survivor talks about the patient experience #CanServe pic.twitter.com/ye3D5jLTdN

— RutgersCancerInstNJ (@RutgersCancer) June 29, 2016

I have also submitted ideas to the Cancer Moonshot through the website. Do you have an idea? The site is live until July 1,2016 

As VP Biden said "This is Urgent" and I agree . This initiative gives me hope that we will develop a screening test.

Dee
Every Day is a Blessing!