Bringing Digital Oncology Resources to Underserved Communities
In 2020 Gilda’s Club boldly added two important initiatives to our strategic plan. First, driven by our mission to ensure that no one faces cancer alone in Minnesota, we began building a plan to improve gaps in inclusion, diversity, equity, and access for all community members facing cancer. Secondly, we prioritized the implementation of technology to ensure the effective alignment of people to our resources if they could not reach our clubhouse.
Based on that important vision, we have taken bold steps to extend beyond our bricks and mortar location in the west suburbs of Minneapolis. We began offering virtual online programming, which has become a critical approach for serving our Minnesota cancer community with health disparities and access barriers. We are now launching a new pilot initiative giving qualified cancer patients the ability to receive free Wi-Fi and a tablet to access our cancer support groups and education at no cost.
What is this initiative?
Gilda’s Club Minnesota is partnering on an approach to improve healthcare access by connecting with individuals in medically underserved communities. As a result, Gilda’s Club can now enroll eligible people in the Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP), a $14.2 billion benefit program launched by the FCC in December 2021.
The ACP exists to help households afford the broadband they need for healthcare, work, school, and more. A household is eligible for the ACP if its income is at or below 200% of the Federal Poverty Guidelines or if a member of the household participates in Medicaid, SNAP, WIC, or other federal assistance programs. This project involves providing CSC/GC psychosocial resources and programming to members in their homes via cancer-centric configured tablets. Through the project, we will seek to understand if this is a feasible and effective way to increase access to psychosocial oncology care in communities with underserved people.
The goals are:
- to determine if the ACP-provided tablet itself serves as an effective way to deploy this support,
- to determine which content/services are accessed most by end users, and
- to determine if users find this approach helpful in their cancer journey.
Funding for tablet devices and broadband connectivity comes partly from the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ‘s Affordable Connectivity Program (ACP). We sought to make it as easy for our community partners to make their patients aware of the ACP, to enroll eligible households, and to distribute tablets.
As we know too well, social determinants of health (SDOH) affect cancer rates in many areas: Rural, urban, non-English speaking communities, and Tribal lands. In general, people with lower socioeconomic status and lower educational attainment have statistically higher incidences of cancer and later diagnosis of cancer.
Other factors contribute to poor oncology outcomes, including limited access to healthcare, poor transportation options, lack of access to healthy food/nutrition education, medical mistrust, limited access to culturally appropriate clinical trials or care, and low rates of preventative care, not to mention the financial and emotional burden cancer brings to families.
Why are we doing this?
It’s all about health equity. Underserved communities have endured a long history of disparate access to quality cancer care and lack of culturally appropriate support services. Gilda’s Club is focused on creating solutions to improve health services and outcomes for communities whose members are disproportionately affected by cancer.
By introducing the ACP and enrolling people in our program, we can help ensure at-risk, under-connected individuals have access to the information, resources, and care solutions they need to manage their cancer experience more effectively.
We see a significant opportunity to help mitigate access barriers by using digital technology to provide evidence-based tools that connect people to Gilda’s Club resources, their community, and the oncology community.
If you feel you or someone you know would benefit from this new program, or if you would like to partner with us to get the message to the community, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me directly by phone at (952) 767-7620 or by email at Katherine.Todd@gildasclubmn.org.
Warmly,
Katherine Todd
Executive Director
612-227-2147 main | 952-767-7620 direct
10560 Wayzata Blvd., Minneapolis, MN 55305
