AccessHope is an essential benefit for members and their families when they are facing the fight of their lives. We remotely deploy the latest cancer care knowledge from subspecialists at NCI-Designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers across the country to help people who need it most — no matter where they live.
What we saw and heard
The most common cancers our experts reviewed were breast, colon, and lung — three of the four most common cancers nationwide.
Our Cancer Support Team (CST) provides information to members, their families, and their caregivers. Compassionate, specialized, and experienced oncology nurses responded to questions that covered a range of topics in 2022 and these were among the most common:
- Advice on managing side effects
- Help preparing for doctor’s visits
- Information on clinical trials
- Resources for emotional well-being
AccessHope’s experts share innovations in cancer treatments
AccessHope’s subspecialist experts provide information about the newest treatments and innovations to members’ health plans and their local oncologists to help them achieve the best possible treatment outcomes. Among our experts, four of these advances stood out for 2022:
- A targeted treatment for people with a newly-defined subtype of breast cancer produced significantly higher survival rates than additional chemotherapy. In August, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved the treatment, which targets breast tumors that has spread despite previous chemotherapy and has low levels of the target HER2, a group previously unknown to benefit from therapy targeting HER2. This treatment, Enhertu, is a newly available option for this newly defined patient subgroup.
- Another form of immunotherapy study provides a new and widely available treatment for patients with an incurable form of the blood cancer multiple myeloma. Patients with advanced multiple myeloma in dire need of treatment options previously had to join long waitlists to get these types of therapies. The recent approval of a novel, off-the-shelf medication called Teclistamab (Tecvayli) now offers the promise of deep and durable responses to many more individuals and has changed the myeloma landscape.
- In a boon to quality of life for rectal cancer survivors, a clinical study showed the advantages of “total neoadjuvant therapy” — administering both chemotherapy and a treatment combining radiation and chemotherapy. Half of the patients receiving total neoadjuvant therapy were able to skip surgery and had similar long-term outcomes as those patients who had undergone surgery.
