WASHINGTON (Sept. 12, 2016) — The George Washington University (GW) Cancer Center is pleased to announce the launch of the first-ever online Community of Practice for patient-centered cancer care. Supported by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI) through a $250,000 Eugene Washington PCORI Engagement Award, the GW Cancer Center built on existing dissemination efforts to develop an online site called the Generation and Translation of Evidence (GATE). The GATE is an engagement and communication mechanism that initially will focus on cancer patient navigation and cancer survivorship.
“The GATE represents a new way of doing research that is highly collaborative and engages stakeholders from conceptualization to dissemination,” said Mandi Pratt-Chapman, associate center director for patient-centered initiatives and health equity for the GW Cancer Center. “Through this Community of Practice, we bring together researchers, front-line clinicians, and the patients who should benefit from our research endeavors to improve the relevance and reach of our research.”
In addition to fostering collaboration among the patient-centered research community, GATE will help shepherd research into practice more quickly.
“In bringing together diverse stakeholders—clinicians, patients and researchers—the GATE will help to reduce the on-average 17-year lag between research discoveries and practice implementation,” said Sarah Birken, Ph.D., co-chair for the survivorship special interest group for the GATE project and assistant professor in the Department of Health Policy and Management in the Gillings School of Global Public Health at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Collaboration across sectors will speed the implementation of state-of-the-art survivorship care practices.”
The GATE includes the following components:
- research findings,
- practice-based insights and lessons learned,
- searchable questions-and-answers,
- ask the expert small group sessions,
- special interest groups, and
- an e-newsletter
“The GATE Cancer Community of Practice fills a need for quality, relevant information for patients and other stakeholders and provides a launching pad for implementing promising evidence-based practices and programs,” said Jean Slustsky, chief engagement and dissemination officer at PCORI.
PCORI is an independent, non-profit organization authorized by Congress in 2010 to fund comparative effectiveness research that will provide patients, their caregivers, and clinicians with the evidence needed to make better-informed health and healthcare decisions. PCORI is committed to seeking input from a broad range of stakeholders to guide its work.
