ARCC and McMaster Health Forum awarded CPAC grant

Drug expenditures in oncology have risen faster than in other areas of health care. While health gains have been made in the treatment of cancer with new therapies, there is concern among policy makers and health care providers that the high costs for new cancer treatments might not be justified by the often small increase in health benefit they provide over less expensive drugs. Increasingly, health policy makers are turning to the public for guidance in developing solutions to policy dilemmas like this.

ARCC is proud to announce that in collaboration with the McMaster Health Forum we have been awarded funding from CPAC to engage Canadians on their priorities for cancer drug funding decisions. Lead investigators Dr. Stuart Peacock (ARCC Co-Director), Julia Abelson (CHEPA/McMaster Health Forum), and Michael Burgess (ARCC Investigator) will lead this pan-Canadian initiative with the assistance and extensive collaboration of their research teams.  This funding support builds directly on a 2014 public deliberation event held in BC on the topic of decision making for funding for cancer drugs. Dr. Peacock led the BC event as part of a CIHR-PHSI grant.

Six public deliberation events across four provinces are planned for 2016. Anticipated deliverables for this project will include:

• A set of recommendations from each deliberative public engagement event to guide cancer drug funding decisions within the different provincial jurisdictions (recommendations are generated by participants at each event and will be directly included in our provincial guidance)
• A synthesis of recommendations and guidance from across the provincial jurisdictions, including areas of agreement and persistent disagreement (the synthesis includes results from the provincial events, including the 2014 BC deliberation, and a pan-Canadian deliberative event)
• The development of tools and strategies to help support provincial funding decisions on cancer drugs

We are very excited to be involved in this collaboration and are looking forward to the next steps in this research! Special congratulations to Dr. Peacock and Dr. Burgess for their roles in preparing this successful proposal.  Information about the deliberative events will be placed on the CanEngage.ca website.

To read the McMaster Health Forum Announcement CLICK HERE.