REAL WORLD EVIDENCE →
Research Focus: Cancer Metastasis
The JKTG Foundation focuses much of its research funding on better understanding cancer metastasis and ultimately stopping or pausing it.
Metastasis is the process in which a cancer spreads from its original or starting location to other locations within the body, most often lymph nodes.
This is to be distinguished from invasion, which is the growth of a cancer into neighboring tissues. Most cancers metastasize but not all, and when they do metastasize the cancer remains identified by the place where it developed (metastatic breast cancer, for example). While difficult to stop, metastatic cancers are often treated in the same manner as earlier cancer treatment.
Cancer cells spread, or metastasize, by growing into nearby tissue, moving through walls of nearby lymph nodes or blood vessels or spreading through lymphatic system and bloodstream.
For a helpful video breaking down how cancer spreads, please watch this from the National Cancer Institute.
The Foundation is named in part for Jayne Koskinas, wife to founder and president Ted Giovanis, who lost her life to breast cancer metastasis. It has made funding this work important and personal.
Resources on Mestasis:
The American Society of Clinical Oncology
What is metastasis?
American Cancer Society
What is metastatic cancer?
National Cancer Institute
Research Focus: Health Care Quality
While data and measurement can be effective tools to better standardize and improve care for patients, critics point to the volume of measures hospitals and providers are asked to complete, as well as flawed underlying formulas for some of the more complex measures.
Further, Medicare has several programs that reward hospitals and providers based on results from their measurements, which proves problematic when these measures are flawed.
The JKTG Foundation believes we must approach quality improvement in an unbiased, honest way. Rather than accept the status quo, current systems should be questioned: Is this the best approach? Is there a way to do things better? Only then will the U.S. have the health care system it deserves.
Research Focus: Real-World Evidence
The JKTG Foundation supports analysis, research and events that advance development and adoption of real-world evidence in policy.
Real-world evidence incorporates patient experience, in a reliable and secure manner, to improve the efficacy and safety of treatment for disease and illness. It can also help patients make more informed decisions related to the care they receive.
Recent legislation cleared the way for drug companies to begin building this important patient perspective into their process and the FDA released a framework that outlines how real-world evidence should be used.
The JKTG Foundation believes the U.S. must develop policy and data infrastructure to take full advantage of secure patient information to improve both treatment and outcomes for all patients. Leading the Foundation’s work in this area are events and reports by the Bipartisan Policy Center (links below).
Resources on Real-World Evidence:
JAMA Oncology
Real-world evidence – What does it really mean?
Bipartisan Policy Center
FDA
Framework for FDA’s real-world evidence program
Journal of Comparative Effectiveness Research
Real-world evidence for coverage decisions: opportunities and challenges
Bipartisan Policy Center
Using real-world evidence to accelerate safe and effective cures
The role of real-world evidence in regulatory and value-based payment decision making