Theresa’s Research Foundation is excited to announce the launch of Patient Advocate Video Education (PAVE). This new initiative is a series of videos highlighting the latest in metastatic breast cancer research. PAVE is unique because patient advocates living with metastatic breast cancer conduct the interviews.
Metastatic breast cancer, stage IV, or advanced breast cancer, develops when breast cancer cells spread beyond the breast to other parts of the body. The most common sites of metastasis are the bones, lungs, liver and brain. Metastatic breast cancer is not curable. Up to 20% to 30% of people initially diagnosed with early-stage disease will develop metastatic breast cancer. It accounts for an estimated 40,000 deaths yearly in the United States.
“Research is the key to improving outcomes in MBC. Traditionally this has been a linear process of basic, preclinical, and clinical studies leading to new therapies. By bringing together researchers, clinicians, patients and advocates a new 360 degree perspective emerges, which can inform and accelerate progress in MBC,” commented Dr. Timothy J. Pluard, Medical Director of St. Luke’s Hospital and Koontz Center for Advanced Breast Cancer.
Progress has been made in recent years to educate all breast cancer patients and the public about metastatic breast cancer, but a major gap in knowledge still exists. PAVE improves on that and gives a voice to patient advocates living with metastatic breast cancer and shows how they interact and collaborate with researchers and clinicians to change the odds. Advocates conducted the first four PAVE interviews at the 6th Annual MBC Research Conference in 2019. The conference includes a program for patient advocates, and advocates are members of the conference planning committee.
“PAVE is an excellent educational tool and a platform that shows how MBC patients work with oncology professionals to move the dial away from treatment toxicities and toward duration. To repeat a phrase I used in the opening remarks to the 2019 MBC Research Conference, patients are the end users in this context, and therefore our input is critical,” said Joan Mancuso, patient advocate and member of the MBC Research Conference Planning Committee.
Theresa’s Research Foundation would like to thank the following sponsors for helping to make this project possible: Lilly Oncology, Daiichi-Sankyo, Abbvie, Pfizer Oncology, Seattle Genetics, Eisai, Puma Biotechnology and Genentech.
The Foundation and its sponsors had no influence on the development and content of PAVE. Roseland Media filmed the four interviews at the annual conference in 2019.
