Archived

This content is available here strictly for research, reference, and/or recordkeeping and as such it may not be fully accessible. If you work or study at University of Kentucky and would like to request an accessible version, please use the SensusAccess Document Converter.

Abstract

Background: Pediatric, adolescent, and young adult patients with cancer and their caregivers are at high risk of financial toxicity, and few evidence-based oncology financial and legal navigation programs exist to address it. We tested the feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary effectiveness of Financial and Insurance Navigation Assistance, a novel interdisciplinary financial and legal naviga- tion intervention for pediatric, adolescent and young adult patients and their caregivers.

Methods: We used a single-arm feasibility and acceptability trial design in a pediatric hematology and oncology clinic and collected preintervention and postintervention surveys to assess changes in financial toxicity (3 domains: psychological response/ Comprehensive Score for Financial Toxicity [COST], material conditions, and coping behaviors); health-related quality of life (Patient-Reported Outcomes Measurement Information System Physical and Mental Health, Anxiety, Depression, and Parent Proxy scales); and perceived feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness.

Results: In total, 45 participants received financial navigation, 6 received legal navigation, and 10 received both. Among 15 adult patients, significant improvements in FACIT-COST (P ¼ .041) and physical health (P ¼ .036) were noted. Among 46 caregivers, signifi- cant improvements were noted for FACIT-COST (P < .001), the total financial toxicity score (P ¼ .001), and the parent proxy global health score (P ¼ .0037). We were able to secure roughly $335 323 in financial benefits for 48 participants. The intervention was rated highly for feasibility, acceptability, and appropriateness.

Conclusions: Integrating financial and legal navigation through Financial and Insurance Navigation Assistance was feasible and acceptable and underscores the benefit of a multidisciplinary approach to addressing financial toxicity.

ClinicalTrials.gov registration: NCT05876325

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-2024

Notes/Citation Information

© The Author(s) 2024. Published by Oxford University Press. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted reuse, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Digital Object Identifier (DOI)

https://doi.org/10.1093/jncics/pkae025

Funding Information

This study was funded by The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (No. 77293); the Patient Oriented and Population Science Shared Resource Facilities and Research Communications Office, Markey Cancer Center University of Kentucky (P30CA177558); the National Institutes of Health National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through grant No. UL1TR001998; and UK HealthCare’s Patient Financial Services. H. F. was supported by American Cancer Society grant No. IRG-22-152-34-IRG and American Cancer Society Center for Diversity in Cancer Research grant No. POST-BACC-22-1042000-01-DPBACC.

Download

Share

COinS