Women over 65 represent the fastest growing segment of breast cancer survivors. The fact that so many of them need mediations for anxiety, depression, and distress even after active cancer care highlights the fact that we know so little about the specific needs of these patients.

This study represents an important overview of high-risk medication use in a vulnerable population, namely older breast cancer survivors. The fact that women increase their use of psychotropic and opioid medications during treatment is not surprising due to the current treatment of nonmetastatic breast cancer (ie, surgery and cytotoxic chemotherapy), but the trend toward continued use into survivorship warrants further evaluation as to cause. Given the current campaign to curb opioid abuse in the general population, understanding the reasons for use of these medications and development of better interventions to address underlying causes is critical to ensuring the best outcomes for this, and potentially other, patient populations

We are collaborating with Cerner to provide practitioners with access to evidence-based treatment protocols at the point of care to help provide patients with the most up-to-date regimens possible for their specific diagnoses.

At Cerner, we constantly work to provide solutions that support the oncology care team as they make the best treatment decisions possible. Our collaboration with NCCN will further this mission by providing clinicians with direct access to the evidence-based NCCN Chemotherapy Order Templates in their PowerChart Oncology workflow. We have always recommended that clients use NCCN Guidelines® and NCCN Templates and now they will be integrated into PowerChart Oncology. This will help providers follow the most up-to-date treatment plans and be more available to focus on what is most important, their patients.

We are proud of this achievement and grateful for the support and participation of our Member Institutions in reaching this goal. Our efforts will not stop here. We challenge all medical centers, hospitals, and oncology practices around the nation and the world to implement this medication safety policy so this error never occurs again.

One more life taken is one too many. We are glad an organization of NCCN’s influence has stepped up to bring this issue to national attention. Ending this devastating error should be a priority for all of us who care for and advocate on behalf of patients and their families.

The Just Bag It campaign is the latest of NCCN’s long-standing efforts to improve the safe use of drugs in cancer care. For more than 15 years, the Best Practices Committee has worked to ensure the highest standards of safety for patients.

Distress can be caused by a variety of issues, concerns, or symptoms, but how distress is experienced and what underlies a person’s distress is unique to each person and changes over time. The SFD helps clinicians identify distressed patients and their issues, concerns, or symptoms driving their distress. This project has demonstrated that through clinical review and targeted response to the patient priority issue, improved clinical outcomes and patient experiences can be achieved.

“Patient distress has received little attention from clinicians, but can have a large impact on patient quality of life. As such, screening for distress will become increasingly important in clinical practices, so information on its implementation is useful for practitioners.

NCCN Foundation is dedicated to providing guidance to people diagnosed with cancer so they and their loved ones are prepared to make informed decisions about their cancer care. Every person with cancer is unique, and we hope that the NCCN Guidelines for Patients will provide the information needed for patients to choose the treatment that is best for them. We thank Debbie’s Dream Foundation: Curing Stomach Cancer and No Stomach For Cancer for their generous sponsorship of these important patient resources.

When I was diagnosed in April 2008 with stage IV inoperable and incurable stomach cancer, there were very few resources with little information for someone with this disease. It gives me hope that the NCCN is offering guidelines to help patients better understand their diagnosis and make informed treatment decisions and we at Debbie’s Dream Foundation are thrilled to be a part of making the NCCN Guidelines for Patients: Stomach Cancer a reality.

An important part of our global mission is to empower families so that they know there is help available after diagnosis. There are many questions that need to be answered when someone is affected by this disease. We are proud to be a part of this collaborative effort, and believe that the patient guidelines for stomach cancer will be an invaluable resource for patients, families, and caregivers worldwide.

The management of MPNs has been variable in the past and largely driven by review articles and individual opinions. The NCCN Guidelines Panel for MPN hopes these inaugural Guidelines will help leverage the evidence base in MPN care for clear, well-informed, treatment guidelines to hopefully improve quality of care and provide better outcomes for patients with MPN.

Since 2011, New Century Health has been a licensee of the NCCN Drugs & Biologics Compendium (NCCN Compendium®) for use in Health Information Technology. We appreciate that they will now deliver NCCN Guidelines®-based, qualified imaging AUC to provider groups, health plans, and accountable care organizations throughout the country. Providing NCCN Imaging AUC™ electronically at point-of-care helps assure quality cancer care for patients with cancer while minimizing unneeded imaging.

We strongly believe that expanding our strategic collaboration with NCCN strengthens our ability to bring enhanced clinical value to oncologists. Through the use of NCCN Imaging AUC™, our participating physicians will be able to ensure that their patients receive the most appropriate imaging at the most appropriate time during the course of treatment.

Identifying the risk of severe complications is challenging given the paucity of data and heterogeneity in physiologic reserve among patients of the same age.

It is important to identify patients at risk for treatment-related complications particularly for the selection of patients that may benefit from ‘pre-phase’ therapy to mitigate risk. The model proposed by Olszewki, et al. provides a simple assessment of treatment-related risk.

NCCN is excited to initiate three studies by accomplished investigators at Member Institutions that will explore the effect of this novel immunotherapy in three different cancers with significant unmet need.

We’d like to extend our congratulations to the three investigators who were selected for their unique and innovative concepts. These studies align with our development strategy for bavituximab, which is currently focused on small, early stage clinical trials evaluating the drug in combination with other cancer treatments. Collaborators such as NCCN play a central role in this strategy and we look forward to integrating the valuable clinical data generated by these investigators to expand our knowledge regarding bavituximab-focused cancer treatment combinations.

Integration of NCCN Imaging AUC directly into the electronic health care workflow through OrderWise™ will benefit providers with point-of-care access to qualified, NCCN Guidelines-based imaging recommendations to assure quality care of patients with cancer. We welcome MedCurrent as an NCCN Health Information Technology (HIT) licensee and the opportunity to promote the standard of care set forth by expert NCCN Guidelines panels.

MedCurrent’s continued collaboration with NCCN will enable more appropriate, evidence-based care for patients with cancer. Our team has been working closely with NCCN to integrate their Imaging AUC into MedCurrent’s CDS technology solution, with a focus on workflow and structuring clinical content that ensures the integrity and high-standards expected of NCCN. Our relationship with NCCN means leading oncology centers will now have access to nationally recognized recommendations delivered at the point of care by OrderWise.

Our work provides a new perspective on cancer outcomes disparities in the United States, laying the groundwork for future research to assess the effect of the Affordable Care Act on cancer outcomes across states.

Our study highlights regional disparities in terms of financial and cancer outcomes, indicating a potential inefficient allocation of resources in the efforts against cancer.

Increased spending does not necessarily improve quality of care, but capping or cutting spending on health care does not necessarily solve problems either.

Through our collaboration with NDSC, providers and their patients with cancer can benefit from access to NCCN Guidelines-based, qualified imaging criteria incorporated directly into electronic healthcare workflow. We are grateful to NDSC for their willingness to be an NCCN Health Information Technology (HIT) licensee; providing NCCN Imaging AUC at point-of-care through technology helps assure quality cancer care while minimizing unneeded or inappropriate imaging.

NDSC’s collaboration with NCCN expands on the more than 15,000 clinical endpoints already contained in our solution, installed at more than 150 health systems nationally. The robust NCCN criteria sets the standard for imaging appropriate use criteria for cancer patients. Our relationship with NCCN will enable NDSC to apply our proven competence to deliver guidelines into EMR workflows and enable us to provide a comprehensive cancer AUC set consistent with our mission to deliver standard-based, nationally recognized guidelines at the point of care.

This study highlights sub-optimal U.S. compliance with guideline recommendations for baseline BMD testing when starting AI therapy. Older women, at higher risk for fractures in general, are least likely to get testing, and the slight increase in empiric treatment in no way closes the gap.

NCCN is proud of this acknowledgement from CMS, and we congratulate our fellow PLEs on their recognition. At NCCN, we strive to improve the lives of people with cancer, and as a CMS-approved provider-led entity for development of diagnostic imaging AUC, we help to further assure that patients with cancer receive quality care while avoiding unnecessary diagnostic imaging.

NCCN Foundation thanks the Aplastic Anemia and MDS International Foundation for their generous sponsorship of the NCCN Guidelines for Patients: MDS. Access to these new, easy-to-understand resources empowers patients to ask important questions and make well-informed decisions about their cancer care.

We are grateful for the opportunity to partner with NCCN to develop this valuable patient resource. Education has always been a key component of our mission, and we are proud to have contributed to the creation of these important guidelines for MDS patients and their families.

As part of a relatively small patient population, people diagnosed with Mycosis Fungoides have limited credible resources from which to learn about their disease. NCCN Foundation is proud to offer these patients and their caregivers educational resources tailored specifically to their needs in order to empower them to make informed decisions about their health care.

This study uncovered abundant evidence that palliative care can help terminally ill patients with cancer relieve their severe anxiety symptoms by adequately managing both physical and depressive symptoms. Patients with strong social support can lighten perceived burden to others. It is the health care professionals’ turn to integrate palliative care early in the cancer treatment process so that patients benefit from these interventions to improve their psychological well-being when fighting their cancer and facing their mortality.

This is another of the exciting research projects targeting unique vulnerabilities of cancer cells identified through molecular characterization of cancers. We are grateful to ImmunoGen for their funding of these eight promising studies aimed at targeted therapy in cancers that affect millions of women worldwide.

“We are pleased to provide this funding to the NCCN ORP to support preclinical and clinical exploration of our FRα-targeted agent mirvetuximab soravtansine. NCCN and its Member Institutions share in our mission to develop innovative therapies that meaningfully improve the lives of patients and this collaboration will help to further advance our understanding of the potential of mirvetuximab soravtansine.

The launch of the NCCN Imaging AUC furthers our mission to improve the lives of people with cancer. This easy-to-use resource, based on the unbiased, expert opinion of NCCN Guidelines panel members, enhances clinical decision-making and helps patients receive the very best of cancer care possible.

The patient experience in the United States is in large part shaped by health policy, and health policy in the United States has a large impact on the global policy landscape. NCCN has the unique ability to provide real-world recommendations with implications for public policy, process, and implementation at the global level. The Policy and Advocacy Fellow will also bolster NCCN’s impact on U.S. health policy, as well as further infuse the patient advocacy voice into the oncology policy arena.

Our support for people living with cancer and their loved ones goes beyond the compounds we’re developing or any medicine we hope to provide. We believe that we have an obligation to take a broad view of the communities we serve and to meet their specific needs. The NCCN Policy and Advocacy Fellowship is a perfect example of meeting that need within the cancer community.

The goal of the NCCN Foundation is to deliver true insight to people living with the challenges and complexities of a cancer diagnosis so they can take an active role in their care and the care of their loved ones. We are proud to collaborate with The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society to make these resources available for people with Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphomas.

The goal of pain control is balance—balance of pain relief, enhanced function, and safety of the patient, prescriber, and community.

This year’s conference was record-breaking, with the most attendees in its 21-year history. The breadth of topics presented at the conference certainly is a reflection of the impact that NCCN and the NCCN Guidelines have had on people with cancer and their families. We look forward to even further growth in 2017 as we move this conference to Orlando.

It has been a pleasure to work with Dr. Silver for the past three years and he has left an indelible impact on NCCN from his tenure as Chair of the Board of Directors. We thank him for his service. Looking forward, we are eager to continue our program growth under the leadership of Dr. Eberlein.

I am looking forward to working with all of the NCCN board members and NCCN staff, with the goal of improving patient care and the patient experience for all people with cancer.

We are pleased to welcome University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center as an NCCN Member Institution. UWCCC’s esteemed cancer center indeed brings unique attributes to the alliance, particularly its comprehensive palliative care program which includes an in-patient unit and consultation service, children’s hospital consultative service, and an outpatient onco-palliative care clinic.

Our collaboration with University of Wisconsin Carbone Cancer Center will play an integral role as NCCN strengthens its foothold in national oncology policy. As part of its impressive policy program, UWCCC houses a coalition of more than 100 organizations in Wisconsin working to reduce the burden of cancer by convening governmental affairs experts, cancer care providers, and health care administrators.

As one of the original NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers, we are delighted to have the opportunity to join the esteemed cancer centers of NCCN, which share our devotion to improving the lives of cancer patients through the rapid application of cancer discovery to cancer care and education.

NCCN Foundation is committed to advancing cancer treatment by funding promising young researchers at the forefront of innovation in cancer research. We congratulate and applaud the 2016 awardees for their dedication to advancing the standard of cancer care.

NCCN believes that investments in young investigators at the beginning of their careers is a powerful mechanism to ensure that the best and brightest begin their journey to a future in cancer research.

The study findings underscore the necessity of targeted research, program, policy, and intervention efforts required to reduce the incidence of non-cancer-related hospitalizations in elderly men with prostate cancer. Effective communication between oncologists and primary care physicians should be facilitated in order to design and implement individualized care programs for patients, taking into account their pre-existing conditions, in order to lead to optimal outcomes for the patient.

The NCCN 21st Annual Conference is a true illustration of the remarkable impact that our organization and its esteemed Member Institutions have had in the treatment of people with cancer, as well as the relevancy of and demand for the library of NCCN Guidelines. This year’s conference not only features milestones and advancements in cancer therapy, screening, and supportive care, but also brings together renowned experts to tackle key challenges to the U.S. health care system, as well as issues surrounding integrating personal values into treatment planning.

This roundtable will offer insight into the impact of the elections and administration change on health care and the care for cancer patients