Establishing a Primary Care Alliance for Conducting Cancer Prevention Clinical Research at Community Sites

In September 2020, the National Cancer Institute convened the first PARTNRS Workshop as an initiative to forge partnerships between oncologists, primary care professionals, and non-oncology specialists for promoting patient accrual into cancer prevention trials. This paper describes the findings of this workshop, including strategies for protocol development that might enhance integration of these trials into community settings where a diversity of patients might be accrued. It was suggested that those in research who are developing protocols should encourage more involvement of primary care professionals, relevant prevention specialists, and patient representatives at the concept level to improve adoptability of the trials within community facilities, and consider various incentives to primary care professionals (i.e., remuneration). Another suggestion was for principal investigators to serve as liaisons who produce and maintain a list of  “Prevention Research Champions” – PCPs and non-oncology specialists relevant in prevention research who can attract health professionals to consider incorporating prevention research into their practices. Finally, patient advocates and community health providers might convince patients of the benefits of trial-participation and encourage “shared-decision making.” Read full text