Blood Cancer Awareness Month
26 September 2024
Every 27 seconds, someone in the world is diagnosed with blood cancer, a complex group of diseases that are often challenging to diagnose and treat. Despite their significant impact, awareness and visibility campaigns for blood cancers often lag behind those for more well-known cancers like breast, lung and prostate cancer.
Blood Cancer Awareness Month in September seeks to change this by increasing awareness of symptoms to promote early detection, driving attention to the unique challenges faced by patients living with leukaemia, lymphoma, and myeloma, and highlighting the complexities HCPs encounter in their treatment.
At Wave, we recognise that targeted and clinically relevant medical communication is vital for improving care in haematological malignancies. We have identified three areas where we believe effective education is particularly needed:
1. Navigating treatment options
Fuelled by the emergence of novel treatments, such as chimeric antigen receptor T-cell therapies (CAR-T) and bispecific antibodies, the blood cancer landscape has entered an unprecedented era of choice. While the abundance of treatment options offers hope, it also presents significant challenges for HCPs as they navigate the intricacies of treatment decision-making. Ongoing education is therefore essential to empower HCPs with the knowledge to understand the nuances of each treatment option and allow them to make informed choices tailored to individual patient needs.
2. Holistic survivorship care
With advancements in targeted therapies, patients with some blood cancers are living longer, and their care needs are evolving accordingly. Coordination among HCPs across multiple disciplines becomes critical as patients transition from treatment to survivorship. Education and awareness are needed to equip HCPs with the skills to manage this complex environment, enabling them to collaborate successfully and address both the medical and psychosocial needs of patients throughout their journey.
3. Technological innovation
Recent developments in genetic sequencing and artificial intelligence are hot topics across oncology, and blood cancer is no exception. These innovations have the potential to provide valuable insights into patient profiles, treatment responses and enable more personalised treatment approaches. However, to fully leverage their benefits, clinicians need to understand how to use the insights gained from these technologies and apply them in clinical practice to optimise patient care.