Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) Celebrates 25 Years

Excerpt

The Cancer Patient Education Network (CPEN) is celebrating 25 years of advancing excellence in cancer patient education this year. Scientific discoveries, innovative approaches to health care delivery, and improved health care outcomes are often the result of a very simple idea. CPEN, launched by the National Cancer Institute (NCI), is such an example. The simple idea was this—bring together educators from the NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers to share the tools and approaches they used to educate cancer patients and their families. The expected result—best practices in education that enabled cancer patients, their families, and those that supported them to more easily navigate the health care delivery system, better understand their diagnosis, tests, and treatments being prescribed, and deal with the uncertainty of living with cancer. The vision was for formal education interventions to be recognized as integral components of cancer patient care. …